"You.  Kif."  Pyanfar leaned above the com console, and saw the intruder on the camera they had rigged back at Kefk, a huddled black-robed silhouette in the yellow glare of their access tube.  It was cold out there, no place for standing.  The kif's breath frosted against its own darkness.  "Kif, this is Pyanfar Chanur.  You can talk back from there.  You got some news for me?"

"Skkukuk is my name.  Let me in, Chanur.  The hakkikt an'nikktukktin has sent me."

"In a mahen hell."

"I must freeze then."

"Get your freezing carcass out of my accessway!"

The kif stood still.  Lifted its arms.  The sleeves of the black robes fell back, disclosing black, hairless arms and long, retractable-clawed hands.  "Chanur's safety is mine.  I offer it my weapons."

"Library," she muttered to Haral; and Haral dived for the comp, looking to see what Linguistics made of that as a formula.  Meanwhile she stalled; and the hair on her backbone stood up.  "Kif.  Skkukuk.  What do you expect from me?"

"I wait to discover."

- "Captain," Haral muttered, "library's blank idiom."

- "Fine.  Gods rot. - Kif you take my orders, do you?"

"I am Chanur's."

She killed the sound.  Straightened.  "Gods know what that means either.  We've got a Situation," she said; and as the number four screen carrying the routine output from station central and traffic control suddenly went all to kifish letters, her jaw dropped.  "Gods fry them -"

Tirun snatched at controls.  Nothing better happened.  "That's the station nav output," Tirun said, hitting keys as fast as her fingers could move.  Translation came up: Transmission difficulty.  Lights started flashing elsewhere on the com board, urgent communication arriving from incoming Vigilance and Aja Jin, which had just seen their navigation monitors go totally kif.

Things went chaotic for the moment: Haral swore and started switching systems.  Images flickered on the monitors in rapid sequence.  "Gods!" Pyanfar hissed, putting kif and airlocks out of her mind in the press of worse disasters.  She rang the general alert to bring the crew up.  "We got anything to give them?"

"Station's not jamming us," Haral said.  "We can output our own scan to our friends out there, but it's not much, in our position.  We can beacon them in to dock right enough."

Aft, the lift was working, crew on the way from lowerdecks to the bridge as fast as feet and The Pride's lift mechanism could carry them.  The alarm bell rang in spurts, drowning other sound at intervals.

"Message from central," Tirun said.  "Kif say - say: compliments of the hukkikt and they won't interfere with the docking of our ships.  This is relayed... We've got another call: stsho - that's a protest.  Mahendo'sat - a group is protesting to the kif and wanting rescue.  They're stuck in some shops down the way and they're afraid to go outside.  They want police.  Meanwhile the kif are saying mahen crew will handle docking for Aja Jin and Vigilance - The hakkikt's compliments again."

There was a soft noise, a wheeze of leather upholstery: Chur made it back alone and took a post.  There were running steps in the corridor behind.

"What we got?" Chur asked straightway.