Pride of Chanur Read Online Free PDF Page A

told it. "I'll have no canister-mixing. I'm onto your tricks."
    "Something of ours has been stolen."
    She laughed, helped by sheer surprise. "Something of yours stolen, master thief? That's a wonder to tell at home."
    "Best it find its way back to us. Best it should, captain."
    She laid back her ears and grinned, which was not friendliness.
    "Where is your crewwoman going with those boxes?" the kif asked.
    She said nothing. Extruded claws.
    "It would not be, Captain, that you've somehow found that lost item."
    "What, lost, now?"
    "Lost and found again, I think."
    "What ship are you, kif?"
    "If you were as clever as you imagine you are, captain, you would know."
    "I like to know who I'm talking to. Even among kif. I'll reckon you know my name, skulking about out here. What's yours?"
    "Akukkakk is mine, Chanur captain. Pyanfar Chanur. Yes, we know you. Know you well, captain. We have become interested in you . . . thief."
    "Oh. Akukkakk of what ship?" Her vision sharpened on the kif, whose robes were marginally finer than usual, whose bearing had precious little kifish stoop in dealing with shorter species, that hunch of shoulders and thrusting forward of the head. This one looked at her the long way, from all its height. "I'd like to know you as well, kif."
    "You will, hani.-No. A last chance. We will redeem this prize you've found. I will make you that offer."
    Her mustache-hairs drew down, as at some offensive aroma. "Interesting if I had this item. Is it round or flat, this strayed object? Or did one of your own crew rob you, kif captain?"
    "You know its shape, since you have it. Give it up, and be paid. Or don't- and be paid, hani, be paid then too."
    "Describe this item to me."
    "For its safe return-gold, ten bars of gold, fine. Contrive your own descriptions."
    "I shall bear it in mind, kif, should I find something unusual and kif-smelling. But so far nothing."
    "Dangerous, hani."
    "What ship, kif?"
    "Hinukku."
    "I'll remember your offer. Indeed I will, master thief."
    The kif said nothing more. Towered erect and silent. She aimed a dry spitting toward its feet and walked off, slow swagger.
    Hinukku, indeed. A whole new kind of trouble, the mahendo'sat had said, and this surly kif or another might have seen ... or talked to those who had seen. Gold, they offered. Kif . . . offered ransom; and no common kif, either, not that one. She walked with a prickling between her shoulder blades and a multiplying apprehension for Tirun, who was now a small figure walking off along the upcurving docks. No hope that the station authorities would do anything to prevent a murder ... not one between kif and hani. The stsho's neutrality consisted in retreat, and their law in arbitrating after the fact.
    Stsho ships were the most common victims of marauding kif, and still kif docked unchecked at Meetpoint. Madness. A bristling ran up her back and her ears flicked, jingling the rings. Hani might deal with the kif and teach them a lesson, but there was no profit in it, not until moments like this one. Divert every hani ship from profitable trade to kif-hunting? Madness too ... until it was The Pride in question.
    "Pack it up out here," she told her remaining crew when she reached them. "Get those last cans on and shut it down. Get everything ready to break dock. I'm going to call Tirun back here. It's worse than I thought."
    "I'll go after her," Haral said.
    "Do as I say, cousin-and keep Hilfy out of it."
    Haral fell back. Pyanfar started off down the dock-old habit, not to run; a reserve of pride, of caution, of some instinct either good or ill. Still she did not run in front of witnesses. She widened her strides until some bystanders-stsho-did notice, and stared. She gained on Tirun. Almost, almost within convenient shouting distance of Tirun, and still a far, naked distance up the dock's upcurving course to reach Handur's Voyager. Hinukku sat at dock for Tirun to pass before she should come to the hani ship. But the mahendo'sat vessel