Kaiste looked a little bleak. "There is no way to put a good face on this, but we took our chance and rose up, killing almost all the Company people on the ship. Even with the chance that we might do nothing more after that than drift and die slowly in space, we could not let the possibility slip past and know for the rest of our lives that, if we had acted, we might be free. Indeed for some weeks there was confusion. Even among our own people there were killings until we established leadership and some kind of plan. Finally though, among the two thousand aboard, including some of the surviving humans, some of us were found who had a very little experience with stardrives and system drives. After many false starts we set course, as we thought, for Corrivale, hoping that surprise would allow us to reach Grith before the Company could do anything. Perhaps it was a feeble hope, but it was the only course that we could get all the people involved to agree to."
"So you set coordinates," Gabriel said, "and made starfall again."
"That we did. But there was either a fault in the coordinates, or another fault in the stardrive, or perhaps the same one. After five days we came out here. We knew where we were in a general way, but everyone was very afraid that if we tried another starfall, we would rise somewhere even less predictable-inside a sun, say. No one wanted to take another chance. So at last we stripped the ship of supplies and spent a month establishing a sealed colony down here. We used the ship's emergency supplies and shelters to seal and connect the natural caves we found here, which hold air nearly as well as they might water. Then we took our last few people off the ship in a shuttle and sent the ship out on her last starfall. No one knows where she made starrise, though as far as we know, the Company never found her again."
"And you've been here for twenty years," Gabriel said, "scratching out an existence."
"It has not been a proud life," said Kaiste, "but it has at least been a free one. A while after we came, we were finally able to make contact with the traders from Phorcys and Ino, and we traded them what few goods we had and were able to mine-we are good at that at least. We did a good business in the carboniferous stones-our rubies and sapphires are particularly fine."
"Surely you don't think to stay here forever?" Enda said.
Kaiste gazed across the room to where some small sesheyans were playing. An older child was scolding a younger one, who was pulling on his wings and rolling around on the floor. "Our children dream of the forests," Kaiste said. "We very much hope they will see them again. Or rather, for the first time." "But why are you still here?" Gabriel said. "You're not that far from Grith. You could have arranged something-not with the traders maybe, but with some freighter firm based on Grith. Ondway would have helped you, or the people who worked with him."
Kaiste's head was bowed in what Gabriel was learning to recognize as the sesheyan version of shaking one's head "no." When he looked at Gabriel again, that distress was back in his eyes, and a chill ran down Gabriel's back, irrational but impossible to ignore.
Very softly, after a moment, Kaiste said, "We have been betrayed once before. I should say, almost betrayed. Ondway had contacted a trader, a freighter captain whom he trusted. He intended to bring us away from here to Grith on this human's ship in two or three quiet runs. The captain came to look the situation over. We made her welcome, ate fruit with her, did our best to keep her safe here in our home. Then we caught her in the very act of attempting to call VoidCorp to tell them of our presence here. So we killed her." A helpless shrug of the wings. "There was nothing else we could do to protect ourselves. Some among us thought to use her ship ourselves, but when we tried to power up the craft, the entire drive and computer system overloaded, frying the equipment. Apparently the captain had installed some sort of fail-safe device to prevent exactly what we were intending."
Kaiste took a small sip from the metal cup he held. "After that we decided that we would have no more such cases of self-defense on our consciences. Ondway tried to convince us otherwise, wanted to keep trying to organize a way out of here for us, but there would have been no way to be sure that, no matter how much he trusted those who offered him help, they might nevertheless have betrayed him and us. The Company is too powerful. The temptation of what they could offer another betrayer would always be too great. We had come too close to being recaptured or killed, and we would not take that chance again-or the chance of again causing Ondway such guilt and pain as he had suffered because of the captain's betrayal. We made him swear by the Three that he would never reveal our presence here to anyone or try to bring about our rescue, though he was sure he had other friends who would not betray him, humans and others who would have helped. Ondway's movements are simply watched too closely for him to retrieve us himself. Since the incident we have worked to find our own way away from here, no matter how long it takes."
Gabriel sat there in silence, thinking that the time involved might be generations if they kept thinking this way.
"You are very welcome for the supplies you bring and the concern you show," said Kaiste, "but we do not think you should stay longer than the night."
"We appreciate your concern for us," Gabriel said, "but-"
"No, you don't understand," said Kaiste. "This is not a safe place. It has never been a safe place, but now it is even less so."
Gabriel glanced around him at the other sesheyans who sat with them. Their eyes were full of a fear less controlled than Kaiste's.
"What is it?" Gabriel asked. "Let us help."
Kaiste hunched up his wings.
After a few moments one of the other sesheyans said, "The attacks started a year or so ago. It was particularly cruel, in a way, for things on this world were finally beginning to work correctly. We had enough food, the atmosphere was finally showing a little change, the heat was increasing-" "Heat," Kaiste added. "That has been our main problem out this far in the system. But we had been working on it, and we were succeeding. We had enough technical expertise to begin tailoring gases that would increase the heat held in our atmosphere much more swiftly than might otherwise happen." "Greenhousing," Enda said. "Terraforming worlds do that. Heat the atmosphere up first with a lot of noble gases, that kind of thing."
Kaiste bowed his wings in assent. "There is much activity below the planet's crust here, and we have been using the volcanism to help us. We mine for the gases that are of most help in heating up the atmosphere. Progress has been made even more quickly than we dared to hope, since we also found light oxides that we could 'crack' for free oxygen."
"It was always a temporary measure," said the other seshey-an, the female who had spoken. "There had always been two hopes for us before we were nearly betrayed. We would get away from here somehow- hire ships, or if we had to, build them- and smuggle ourselves that way to Grith. We know the difficulties," she said, lifting one claw before Gabriel could speak, "better than you believe, but we were willing enough to try. Otherwise-we would make this world marginally liveable and then eventually call on the Concord for aid. The people on Phorcys and Ino with whom we had been dealing said they would not interfere, but they would not help either. We would have to do it ourselves." Gabriel thought of the plump, comfortable negotiators sitting around the table with the ambassador, sitting on this chilly little secret, and he had to immediately start disabling his own fury before it made him get up and start smashing things.