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Serenity and fighting each other . . ." After a little of that, Louis Nenda had been given the floor. His pheromonal aside to Atvar H'sial— Don't worry. Trust me! —went unnoticed by the other two.

    " . . . dumped with just the clothes we were wearing, and no warning that anything funny was going to happen. One minute we were standing in one of the main chambers, the same one where we rolled the Zardalu into the transition vortex—"

    —and where we had the biggest pile of loot pulled together that you'd see in a dozen lifetimes. I know, At, I'm not going to say that. But it's hard—fifty new bits of Builder technology, each one priceless and ready to grab. Two and a half months' work, all down the tubes. Well, no good crying over what might have been—

    And may yet be, Louis. Surrender wins no wars.

    Mebbe. It's still hard.

    Graves and E.C. Tally were staring at Nenda, puzzled by his sudden silence. He returned to human speech: "Sorry. Started thinkin' about it again. Anyway, all of a sudden Speaker-Between, that know-it-all Builder construct, popped up right behind us, quiet like, so we didn't know he was there. He said, 'This is not what was agreed to. It is unacceptable .' And the next minute—"

    "May I speak?" E.C. Tally's voice was loud and off-putting.

    Nenda turned to Julian Graves. "Couldn't you stop him doing that when you gave him a new body copy? What's wrong now, E.C.?"

    "It was reported to me by Councilor Graves that you and Atvar H'sial were left behind on Serenity not to cooperate , but to engage in single combat . That is not at all the way that you are now describing matters."

    "Ah, well, that was somethin' me and At worked out after your lot had left. Better to cooperate at first , see, until we understood the environment on Serenity, an' after that we'd have plenty of time to fight it out between us—"

    —as indeed we would have fought, Louis, once we were home in the spiral arm with substantial booty. For there are limits to cooperation, and the Builder treasures are vast. But pray continue . . .

    If anyone will let me, I will. Shut up, At, so I can talk.

    "—so Atvar H'sial and I had been working together, trying to figure out where the Zardalu were likely to have gone after they left Serenity—" And making sure we didn't finish up anywhere near them when we left Serenity ourselves. "—because, you see, there was this little baby Zardalu who had been left behind when all the others went ass-over-tentacle down the chute—"

    "Excuse me." Julian Graves's great bald, radiation-scarred head nodded forward on its pipestem neck. "This is of extreme importance. Are you saying that there was a Zardalu left behind on Serenity?"

    "That's exactly what I said. You have a problem with that, Councilor?"

    "On the contrary. And by the way, it is now ex -councilor. I resigned from the Council over this very issue. The Alliance Council listened—perfunctorily, in my opinion—and rejected our concerns in their totality! They do not believe that we traveled together to Serenity. They do not believe that we encountered Builder sentient artifacts. Worst of all, they deny that we encountered living, breathing Zardalu . They claim we imagined all of it. So if you have with you a specimen, an infant or a dead body, or even the smallest end sucker of a tentacle—"

    "Sorry. I hear you, but we don't have even a sniff. It's Speaker-Between's dumb fault again. He accused me and Atvar H'sial of cooperating , instead of feuding; and before we could tell him that he was full of it, he made one of those hissing teakettle noises like he was boiling over, and another one of them vortices swirled up right next to us. It threw us into the Builder transportation system. Just before the vortex got us it grabbed the little Zardalu. He went God-knows-where. We haven't seen him since. Atvar H'sial and I come out together in the ass end of the Zardalu Communion, on a little rathole of a planet called Peppermill. But