ARE THEY REALLY GONE?”

Dwer bent close to an ancient, pitted window. He peered at a glittering starscape, feeling some of the transmitted chill of outer space, just a finger’s breadth away.

“I don’t see any sign of ’em over here,” he called back to Rety. “Is it clear on your side?”

His companion—a girl about fourteen, with a scarred face and stringy hair—pressed against another pane at the opposite end of the dusty chamber, once the control room of a sleek vessel, but now hardly more than a grimy ruin.

“There’s nothin’—unless you count the bits an’ pieces floatin’ out there, that keep fallin’ off this rusty ol’ bucket.”

Her hand slammed the nearest bulkhead. Streams of dust trickled from crevices in prehistoric metal walls.

The starship’s original owners must have been oddly shaped, since the viewing ports were arrayed at knee height to a standing human, while corroded instruments perched on tall pillars spread around the oblong room. Whatever race once piloted this craft, they eventually abandoned it as junk, over half a million years ago, when it was dumped onto a great pile of discarded hulks in the dross midden that lay under Jijo’s ocean.

Immersion in subicy water surely had preserving effects. Still, the Streaker crew had accomplished a miracle, reviving scores of these wrecks for one final voyage. It made Rety’s remark seem unfair, all considered.

There is air in here, Dwer thought. And a machine that spits out a paste we can eat … sort of. We’re holding death at bay. For the moment.

Not that he felt exactly happy about their situation. But after all the narrow escapes of the last few days, Dwer found continued life and health cause for surprised pleasure, not spiteful complaint.

Of course, Rety had her own, unique way of looking at things. Her young life had been a lot harder than his, after all.

“i sniff every corner of this old boat,” a small voice piped, speaking Anglic with a hissing accent and a note of triumph. “no sign of metal monsters, none! we scare them off!”

The speaker trotted across the control room on four miniature hooves—a quadruped with two slim centauroid arms and an agile, snakelike neck. Holding his head up proudly, little yee clattered over to Rety and slipped into her belt pouch. The two called each other “husband and wife,” an interspecies union that made some sense to another Jijoan but would have stunned any citizen of the Civilization of Five Galaxies. The verbose urrish male and an unbathed, prepubescent human female made quite a pairing.

Dwer shook his head.

“Those robots didn’t leave on account of our fierce looks. We were hiding in a closet, scared out of our wits, remember?” He shrugged. “I bet they didn’t search the ship because they saw it for an empty shell right away.”