"Poison it?"
Zainal shook his head, drawing the corners of his mouth down. He gave her a sideways look. "You Humans say you do not like to take Human lives. It is against your laws."
"The Eosi are not Human," she said tartly.
"The Farmers would not like it."
"You haven't given up then, on gaining their assistance?"
"No," he replied.
"What if Humans managed to kill an Eosi…:'
Zainal waved both hands in a cutting negative gesture. "The numbers they would kill in retaliation would decimate your population:'
"The Eosi are already doing that, aren't they?"
"They are, on a small scale, but if an Eosi was known to have been killed by some Human agency, they are just as likely to destroy the entire planet."
"Well, there goes another good idea. We have to kill them all then."
"What is it Ninety says? Bloodtirsty?"
"Bloodthirsty," she corrected him. "I just want my planet free of them."
"As I want my planet free of them. We've had them longer. We get the first chance."
"Not without us right there beside you, Zainal. You Catteni can't have all the fun." Then a yawn overtook her.
"Get some sleep, Kris. You've served a double watch already."
She tried to argue but with one hand, he lifted her out of the chair.
"Get some sleep. I can hear the sergeant moving around:' He reached into one of his thigh pockets. "Tell him to take this powder in water. It'll help."
She took the packet he handed her.
"Didn't know Catteni ever needed hangover remedies," she said, amused.
"Headaches are caused by other things than too much Mayock:'
Kris left before he could see the guilty expression on her face. She found Chuck, looking more green than gray, just coming out of the head, one hand clutching the door frame. He was definitely in need of whatever remedy Zainal had given her for him if it had taken him this long to sleep off the hangover. She cleared her throat, and her mind, of other details.
"Zainal said this will help:'
His eyes weren't really focusing, but she'd got the lenses out before they could have irritated the eyelids. Mind you, his eyes were pretty bloodshot in spite of having no lens aggravation. She took his other hand and-sternly forgetting what her erotic dreams reminded her his hands had been doing-slapped the packet into the palm.
"All in the line of duty, sarge," she said brightly. "Take it immediately in water. I'll even get the water…"
'I'll get my own water, Bjornsen," he said with great dignity and straightened himself out and walked, however slowly and carefully, back to the galley.
Chapter Five.
IT TOOK NEARLY TWO WEEKS TO REACH the coordinates Kamiton had given Zainal. Kris said nothing about it, but she hadn't realized she'd be so long away from Zane. She thought a lot about him and there was plenty of time to think as they hurtled at top speed toward their destination. "Top speed" was somewhat dampened by a device which Zainal had attached to the propulsion unit just before they shifted to a new heading, and before they left what would have been a well-traveled area of Catteni-controlled space.
"It alters the ion emissions slightly;' he explained.
"We may not be as easy to follow. Certainly it will delay pursuit. Kamiton knows where to meet us."
"He's meeting us?" Chuck exclaimed.
"Didn't Gino tell you?" Zainal asked.
"He told me that Kamiton would have to see before he'd join wholeheartedly;' Kris said.
"Oh," for once Mitford was taken aback. He rubbed his forehead. "I seem to be missing a lot."
"There are alcoholic drinks even I wouldn't take," Zainal said reassuringly.
"I think Kivel probably did his best to get information from you."
"Fraggit, I thought I could hold anything and not spill any beans," Chuck said. "I did hear you mention Kamiton but I didn't know you intended to take him back to Botany:'
"Him and how many others?" was Ninety's query.
"Only Karoiron;' Zainal said. "He is a scout explorer, which is why he knows about this asteroid belt where we will meet him, and then return to Botany. Spatially we are traveling in a triangle so we won't be long getting home once we contact him."
"Do we have to be Catteni with him?" Gino asked, rubbing at the stubble over his gray skin.
"No, because it will give us the… the upper hand," and Zainal grinned, "to show him how well we can fool Catteni, even on their own world."
Kris was not the only one who took in the significance of his last phrase. Ninety nodded slowly, and Gino grinned more broadly than ever.
Coo and Pess nodded. Mack Dargle made a comical grimace.
"What did I say?" asked Zainal who was becoming more and more sensitive to Human nuances.
"Their own world," Kris said, enunciating the three words slowly.
"I would give my eyeteeth to hear other Emassi speak that way of Cat-teni;' Mack said.
The asteroid field was a spectacular vision as they passed the heavy Uranus-type planet well away from the slowly orbiting mass of space detritus.
Chunks large enough to be small moons were interspersed with smaller, uneven hunks following eccentric orbits about each other as well as the big planet, which, like some interstellar miser, seemed unwilling to release any of its satellites. The cosmic do-si-do dance was almost mesmerizing.
Gino wondered just how many of the original inner worlds and moons had been involved in a collision of such magnitude. And how it had occurred. Two charred and dead planets, pockmarked by impacts centuries old, wobbled on erratic Mercury- and Venus-type orbits, each with more small moons of spatial debris attracted by the gravity of the planets they now orbited but not large enough to head for final dissolution in the primary.
The star was dying, according to the spectroscope analysis Gino had done: the readings suggested that the star was doing its damnedest to continue to live. Yes, all this space junk wasn't really an asteroid belt… a field of planetary and lunar fragments hugging the one thing that gave it some stability-the heavy Uranus planet. The area would take days to circumnavigate.
To wend a way through it would require not only a very, very experienced pilot but a ship with heavy shielding and good gunners to explode those bits and pieces that were too small for them to avoid and too big to ibounce harmlessly off the shielding.
"Only someone like Karoitoh would find a… a curiosity like this:' Zainal shrugged and seeded himself more firmly in the pilot's chair, hands poised over the control panel.
"How'll we ever find the one we want with that mess churning around like that?" Gino asked, his hands tense as he readied himself to use the thrusters on Zainal's command. "It's damned near a light year across;'
"No," Zainal replied prosaically, "but certainly it covers an enormous area:'
They'd rehearsed the maneuvering tactics all the previous day, using the diagram that Kamiton had given Zainal. They were to approach from co-oral'mates at the ecliptic and weave a course that, in itself, would have thrown any pursuer off. Not that the ship's detectors had spotted anything following them. Kris wondered how anyone could rely on the diagram since: every rock, boulder, mountain, and small moon seemed to be on a totally · rratic orbit.
SEE WHAT YOU MEANT about being able to hide…:' Chuck murmured respectfully.
"Right thruster two seconds…:' Zainal interrupted Chuck's remark.
Gino responded, and they seemed to be heading directly at a cluster spinning end on end when Zainal asked for three seconds right thruster and they broke into the clear… briefly.