Lunzie activated the sled's power pack to fly back up the hill to the ship. Just about halfway there, she began to a.s.similate the full implications of that little encounter. Dondara had treated her to the "baptism" as he had probably done everyone else on the scout . . . enjoying his little joke. She had taken no umbrage and begged no quarter. But he had been considerate without being patronising, recognising certain lightweight problems rarely encountered by heavyworlders - like a propensity for catching chills.

"Will such minor wonders never cease?" she said to herself, ruffling her slowly drying hair.

"What happened to you?" Vir called as she came into view. "Dondara had me baptised Ambrosian style," Lunzie shouted back, holding out the front of her clammy wet tunic with her good hand.

As she came upon Elessa, she saw that the botanist was grinning. "You knew he was going to do that."

"I'm sorry," the girl giggled. "I almost stopped you; he's such an awful practical joker. To make amends, I found you a kittisnake to examine. Aren't they adorable? And so friendly." She held up a small handful of black fur.

"Hang on to it for me," Lunzie called.

She set the sled down behind the scout. Elessa met her halfway and wound the length of animal around her hands.

"This is one of the most plentiful life-forms on Ambrosia," the botanist explained, "oddly enough omnivorous. They're really Bringan's province but they so love the attention that they're irresistible."

The kittisnake had a small round face, with a round nose and round ears which peered out of its sleek, back-combed fur. It had no limbs, but it was apparent where the thicker body joined the more slender tail. Two bright green eyes with round black pupils opened suddenly and regarded Lunzie expressionlessly. It opened its mouth, revealing two rows of needles, and aspirated a breathy hiss.

"It likes you," Elessa declared, interpreting a response which Lunzie had misjudged. "Pet it. It won't bite you."

It certainly seemed to enjoy the caress, twisting itself into pretzel knots as Lunzie ran her hands down its length. She grinned up at the botanist.

"Responsive, aren't they? Good amba.s.sadors for a flourishing tourist trade on Ambrosia."

While Lunzie was making friends with the kittisnake, a light breeze sprang up. She suddenly decided she needed a warmer tunic over her injured arm. Though the bones had already been knit together by Bringan, the swollen tissue had yet to subside. Lunzie felt her flesh was starting to creep.

"Excuse me, will you?" she asked the botanist.

She squeezed past Zebara, poised in the open hatchway of the scout. He greeted the doctor, raising an eyebrow at her wet hair and clothes.

"Dondara took you to see the snark, huh?"

"A granddaddy snark to judge by the volume of baptismal waters." She grinned up at the heavyworlder.

"Haven't you raised Fleet yet, Flor?" the captain asked, turning back from the hatchway toward the semicircular pilot's compartment. The communications station occupied another quarter arc of the circle facing the rear of the ship between the telemetry station and the corridor.

"Aye, aye, sir," called the communications tech. "I'm just stripping the message from the beacon now. They acknowledge your request and have despatched the Zaid-Dayan. Zaid-Dayan."

"The who? That's a new designation on me," Zebara growled. Lunzie caught the note of suspicion in his voice.

"Be glad, sir. Brand-new commission, on its maiden voyage," Flor said apologetically. "Heavy cruiser, ZD-43, the Registry says, with lots of new hardware and armament."

"What? I don't want to have to wet-nurse an unintegrated lot of lightweight lubbers ..." Zebara sighed, pushing back into the communications booth and looking over Flor's shoulder.

Lunzie slipped in behind him. "Isn't telemetry showing a trace?" she said, noticing the blip on the current sweep of the unit.

"Is that the ZD-43 arriving now? Wait, there's an echo. I see two blips." Zebara eased her aside with one huge hand and inserted himself into the telemetry officer's chair. "Oh-oh! Pollili!" he roared. His voice echoed out onto the hillside. The broad-faced blond woman appeared on the breast of the slope below the shuttle and hurried up it at double time. "Interpret this trace for me," Zebara ordered. "Is this an FSP vessel of any kind? Specifically a new cruiser?"

Pollili took the seat next to Flor as her captain moved aside. She peered at the controls and toggled a computer a.n.a.lysis. "No way. It's not FSP. Irregular engine trace, overpowered for its size. I'd say it's an intruder."

"A pirate?" Lunzie heard herself ask.

"Two, to be precise." Zebara's expression was ferocious. "They must have been hanging in the asteroid belt or dodging us around the sun. How close are they to making orbit?"

"An hour, maybe more. I get traces of big energy weapons, too," Pollili said, pointing to a readout on her screen. "One of 'em is leaking so much it's as much a danger to the ship carrying it as it is to us. An academic point, to be sure, since we're unarmed."

"Will they land?" Lunzie asked, alarmed.

"I doubt it. If we can see them, they can see us. They know someone is down here, but they don't know who or what," Zebara said.

"Forgive me for pointing out a minor difficulty, sir," Flor said in a remarkably level, even droll tone, "but they can dispose of us from s.p.a.ce. The ZD-43 is at least three days behind us," she added, her healthy colour beginning to pale. "Once they realise we're alone here, they'll kill us. Is there nothing we can do?"

Zebara smiled, showing all of his teeth.

What was it Bringan had said? When he grins like a shark, watch out?

"We bluff. Flor, send another message to the Zaid-Dayan Zaid-Dayan. Tell them that we've got two pirates circling Ambrosia. Tell them to take any shortcuts they can. Force multiple jumps. If they don't hurry, we'll be just a scorch mark and crater on the landscape. We're going to stall the inevitable just as long as we can."

"How?" Lunzie demanded, wishing she felt as confident as Zebara sounded.

"That, Doctor, is what we must figure out. Flor, have you sent that? Good. Now get on the general communicator channel and get the crew back here for a conference.

"I want your most positive thinking on how we can keep those pirates off planet," Zebara began once the crew had a.s.sembled in the messroom.

"Those blips couldn't possibly be anything else, could they?" Bringan asked after clearing his throat.

Zebara gave a short bark of laughter. "They haven't answered hails and their profile doesn't match anything in our records. And it's not good neighbourliness they're leaking. Think, my friends. Think hard. How do we stall them?"

"No black box, huh?" asked Vir, a thin human with straight black hair and a bleak expression.

Flor shook her head. "Those would be a long time disconnected." No legitimate ship would put out into s.p.a.ce without the black box interface between control systems and engines which transmitted automatic identification signals. To disconnect it disabled the drives. Unscrupulous engineers had been known to jury-rig components, but such a ship would never be allowed in an FSP-sanctioned port.

Zebara smashed his fist into a palm. "Stop denying the problem. Think. We've got to stall them long enough to let the Zaid-Dayan Zaid-Dayan reach Ambrosian s.p.a.ce." reach Ambrosian s.p.a.ce."

No one spoke for a long moment. No one even exchanged glances in the tense atmosphere of the wardroom.

"What if we take off? Can't we outrun them?" Vir demanded to Wendell, the pilot.

"Not a chance," Wendell said sadly. "My engines don't have the kick to push us far enough out of their range to make a warp jump. They'd catch us halfway there."

"So we're stuck on this planet while the predators line us up in their sights," Dondara growled, scrubbing his dusty hair with his hands. He had taken only thirty minutes to run the distance from the pools after he'd received Flor's mayday recall. Lunzie was full of admiration for the heavyworlder's stamina.

Scarran cleared his throat. His perpetually red-shot brown eyes made him look choleric or sleepy and he had a naturally mild personality.

"What about a violent disease of some sort? We're all dead and dying of it. Highly contagious. Can't find an antidote," he suggested in a self-deprecating voice.

"No, that wouldn't work," Pollili scoffed, drawing her brows together. "Even a.s.suming they're of a species with enough in common with ours to catch it, they'd blow our ship off the face of the planet to wipe out the contagion and then land where they pleased."

"What about natural disaster?" asked Elessa, collecting nods from Flor and Scarran. "Unstable tectonics? An earthquake! A volcano about to blow? They'd have sacrificed scanning potential to some sort of weaponry."

"Possibly," Pollili drawled. "Even the simplest telemetry systems warn you if you're going to put down on a shifting surface. And live volcanoes show up as hot spots on infrared."

"What about a hostile life-form?" Lunzie asked, and was generally hooted down by the others.

"What, attack ferrets?" Elessa held up the black-furred kittisnake, which curled around her hands, cooing breathily to show its contentment. "If the pirates are after Ambrosia when FSP has scarcely heard of its existence, they already know what's down here, besides us. Sorry, folks." "Hold it a moment," Bringan said, raising a hand. "Lunzie has made a positive suggestion that merits discussion. Lunzie ..."

"I had in mind a free bacterium that gets into your breathing apparatus and caulks it up with goo," Lunzie said, warming to her topic. "Five of our officers are down with it already. Nothing, not even breather masks, seems to keep it out. I feel that it's only a matter of time before they die of oxygen deprivation. The organism didn't appear in our initial reports because it's inert, sluggish during the winter months. It dies off in the cold. Now that the climate's warmed up for summer, the bug reproduces like mad. We're all infected. I've just discovered that it's gotten into the ventilation system, housed in the filters. I doubt we'd ever be able to lift off again, with the ship's air-recycling system fouled. I'm putting Ambrosia on indefinite quarantine. Only moral, ethical action possible to a medic or any professionality. Contact between ships is likely to doom them both. In fact, it's my professional opinion that the ARCT-10 ARCT-10 is in real danger since Zebara and Wendell were on board to report to Admin. Their lungs were already contaminated and the air they exhaled from their lungs would now be in the is in real danger since Zebara and Wendell were on board to report to Admin. Their lungs were already contaminated and the air they exhaled from their lungs would now be in the ARCT ARCT's air-recirculation system. Lungs are always warm - until the host is dead."

"What? What are you talking about?" demanded Vir, paling.

"What's this bacterium?" Elessa demanded. "I never observed one here and I prepared all the initial slides!"

"It's called Pseudococcus pneumonosis." Lunzie smiled slyly. She was rather pleased with the astonished reaction to her little fable. "I've just discovered it, you see. A nicely non-existent but highly contagious condition, inevitably and painfully fatal. It might just stall them. It will certainly make them pause a while. If we can be convincing enough." Then she chuckled. "If we get out of this alive, someone better check with the old ARCT ARCT and see just who scrambled to the infirmary, requiring treatment for a fatal lung disease." and see just who scrambled to the infirmary, requiring treatment for a fatal lung disease."

Zebara and Bringan chortled and, when the rest of the crew realised she'd been acting out a scenario, they gave Lunzie a round of applause. Laughter eased the tension and indicated renewed hope.

"That just might work," Bringan agreed after several moments of hard thinking. He gave Lunzie a warm smile. "Would we have trouble with them understanding medical lingo?"

Lunzie shrugged. "If I could fool you for a few minutes, I maybe can fool them. You see, Bringan's only a xeno-medic. He diagnosed it as vacation fever: personnel pretending to be sick so they could lounge in the sun. Once we got back here, with me, a human-medically trained person, I began to suspect a serious medical problem. By then it was too late to contain the bacterium. It was widespread. And, for all I know, loose on the ARCT-10 ARCT-10 as well. as well.

"Sorry about this, folks, but I'll make it extremely personal: heavyworlders get it worst." She warded off the violent protests until Zebara bellowed for silence.

"She's got a valid reason to pick on us."

"I said I was sorry, heavyworlders. I'm not disparaging you but it's a fact, piracy has attracted many heavyworlders. Look, I'm not starting an argument ..."

"And I'm ending it," Zebara said, showing his shark teeth. The muttering subsided immediately. "Lunzie's reasoning is sound. We take the lumps."

"How do you know so much about the planet pirates?" Dondara wanted to know, his eyes narrowed and unfriendly.

"Not my choice, but I do. Sorry about this."

"I'll forgive you if it works," Dondara said, but he gave her a wry twist of a smile.

"I think she's come up with the best chance we've got," the xen.o.biologist said approvingly. "Unless someone has thought up a better one just recently? Who delivers this deathless message to the pirates?" He looked at Zebara.

"I think I'd better," Zebara replied. "Not to decry Lunzie's dramatic abilities, but because the report of a heavyweight will be more acceptable to them than anything a lightweight could say."

"I hate such an expedient." With a fierce expression, Dondara exploded to his feet. "Do we have to compound the insult to all honourable heavyworlders who abhor the practice of piracy?"

With a sad expression on his face, Zebara shook his head at the geologist. "Don, we both know that some of Diplo's children have been weak enough to go into the service of unscrupulous beings in order to ease the crowding of our homeworlds." Dondara started to protest but Zebara cut him off. "Enough! Such weaklings shame us all and the good carry the disgrace along with them until the real culprits can be exposed. I intend to be part of that exposure. And this is one step in the right direction." He turned to Lunzie. "Brief me. Doctor Mespil!"

The plan, as plans do, underwent considerable revision until a creditable script was finally reached. With the help of the garment synthesiser and Flor's copious history diskfiles, Zebara was tricked out in the uniform of an attache of DipIo, the heavyworlders' home planet. On a simple dark blue tunic, Flor attached silver shoulder braid and a tight upright collar of silver that fastened with a chain suspended between two b.u.t.tons. As Zebara was dressed, Lunzie rehea.r.s.ed him on details.

Meanwhile, Flor and Wendell were tinkering with the scout's black box, trying to mask, shield, electronically alter or scramble its identification signal. Neither wanted to tamper with the box because that could lead to other problems.

With a prosthetic putty, Bringan sculpted a new nose for Zebara and broadened his cheekbones to enhance his appearance to a more typical heavyworlder cast. Lunzie was stunned by the result. It changed him completely into one of the dull-faced hulks that she remembered from the Mining Platform.

"Zebara, they've achieved parking orbit," Flor called. "The lead ship will be directly overhead in six minutes."

The last touches of his costume in place, the heavyworld captain swaggered into the communications booth and took his place before the video pickup. Out of sight, Lunzie sat next to Flor in the control room and watched as a hail was sent to the two strange ships.

"Attention to orbiting ships," Zebara announced in a rasping monotone. "Arabesk speaking, attache for His Excellency Lutpostig the Third, the Governor of Diplo. This planet is proscribed by order of His Excellency. Landing is forbidden. Identify yourselves."

On the screen before them, Lunzie and Flor saw a pattern shimmer into coherency. It was not a face but rather an abstract computer-generated graphic.

"So, they can see us, but we can't see them," Flor muttered to Lunzie. "I don't like this," the communications officer added miserably.

An electronically altered voice shivered through the audio pickup. Lunzie tried to guess the species of the speaker but it spoke a pure form of Basic with no telltale characteristics. Possibly computer-generated, like the graphic, she guessed.

"We know of no interdiction on this planet. We are landing in accordance with our orders."

Zebara gave a rasping cough which he only half covered with one hand. "The crew of this ship have contracted an airborne bacteria. Pseudococcus pneumonosis. This life form was not, I repeat, NOT, mentioned in the initial landing report."

"Tell me another one, attache. That report has been circulated."

Zebara's second cough lasted longer and seemed to rake his toes. Lunzie was impressed.

"Of course, but you should also know that the reports were made during the cold season in this hemisphere. Since the weather has warmed, the bacteria has awoken and multiplied explosively, infiltrating every portion of our ship." For good measure he managed a rasping gagging cough of gigantic proportion.

The voice became slightly less suspicious. "The effect of this warm season bacteria?"

"It infests the bronchial tubes, in a condition similar to pneumonia. The alveoli become clogged almost immediately. The first symptom is a pernicious cough." Zebara demonstrated, 'gagging dramatically. "The condition results in painful suffocation leading to death. Five of my crew have died already.

"We heavyworlders appear to be particularly susceptible due to our increased lung capacity," Zebara continued, injecting a note of panic into his voice. "First we tried to filter the bacterium out by using breather masks, but it is smaller than a virus. Nothing keeps it out. It can live anywhere that is warm. It flourished in the ventilation system and the filters are so caulked up that I doubt we will be able to cleanse them sufficiently to take off again. Ironic, for cold slows and kills it. Unfortunately, living pulmonary tissue never becomes cold enough. It even lingers in the lungs of the deceased until the body itself has chilled."

There was murmuring behind the whirling pattern of colours on the screen, then the audio ceased completely.

"Zebara." Pollili's voice came over the private channel. "I now have readings on their ships. They're big ones. One of them is a fully loaded transport lugger, full of cold bodies. There must be five hundred deepsleepers aboard. It's the smaller one that's leaking energy. An escort, carrying enough firepower to split this planet in two."

"Can you identify the life-forms?" Lunzie asked.

"Negative. They're shielded. I get heat traces of about a hundred bodies, but my equipment's not sensitive enough to identify type, only heat emanations." Pollili's voice trailed off as the pirate spoke again.

"We will consider this information."

"I warn you, in the name of DipIo," Zebara insisted, "do not land on this planet. The bacterium is present throughout the atmosphere. Do not land."

Zebara slumped back into the padded seat and wiped his forehead. Flor hastily cut the connection.

"Bravo! Well done," Lunzie congratulated him, handing him a restorative pepper.

The rest of the crew crowded into the communication station.

"What will they do?" Vir asked nervously.

"What they said. Consider the information." Zebara took a long swig of the pepper. "One thing sure. They're not likely to go away."