Current mood:	good
Current music:	S playing Dark Cloud
Entry tags:	aerhai, terole, tri-system scifi

Repost for added parts. :D
Title-- Jackpot
Rating and Warnings-- G; no real warnings.
Species and Characters-- Species is Aerha, a new one. Chars are Am (narrator), Med, Sci, Pilot, and Mech, plus a random Nila.
Summary and Notes-- I found a species. =3 And this is what happened when I tuned in.


The ship rattled, and my chin bouncing against the padded floor woke me abruptly. Out of instinct, I dug my claws into the floor, but even as my eyes opened, my toes were going lax and my head was settling back down. Lethargy was unshakable.

The ship jerked again. But we were in nullspace - there was no turbulence here. The pilot was supposed to be piloting; our other three crewmates were in deepsleep, resting almost comatose until we got to our destination. I was just back-up pilot for when the main one got tired; and it was my turn to sleep.

My eyelids fell shut, and without meaning to, I nearly drifted off again. I couldn't convince myself that I needed to be awake.

The floor hit my jaw a third time, and I huffed as the wind was knocked half from my lungs. Something was wrong, and I was becoming alarmed enough that adrenaline was beginning to overpower my lethargy. I dragged myself upright and half-staggered down the corridor. The gravity in the ship felt wrong, but there were no alarms flashing or ringing. My shoulder hit the wall and glanced off as I stepped into the cockpit...

...and saw our pilot unconscious in her chair.

I'm sure I must have muttered something ungracious as I groggily leapt forward, my tail wrapping around her pilot's helm and unbuckling it carefully as my hands unfastened the harness. She was unharmed and breathing steadily. I settled the p-helm around my eyes and ears, paused to adjust to the instant immersion in virtual perception of the space around the ship... and promptly kicked the pilot out of her chair. We'd dropped out of nullspace and were coming up on a bronzed little planet, which was far too close to another two planets and two moons to be safe, or avoidable.

I used my tail to kick in the air system with a quick dialed command, recycling the oxygen and running things through a few extra filters. I had since stopped breathing - habit of mine, when people fall over for no reason. My kind hold their breath a good long time before we need to start panting. And with my fellow crewwoman down, I was the only one who could fly the ship.

The pilot thumped the short fall to the floor, practically in a roll. I settled onto her couch, the supports under my belly and chest and chin adjusting springily to my greater bulk. My tail wound about the controls, and my hands went to the floorboard, and I was yet again grateful to be secondary pilot as I tried to bring our unguided course to a safe plot. Unfortunately, I was too late to avoid the planet - we'd have to land, then take off later.

There was one rather impressive city that held a few satellites in the upper layers of the atmosphere; the rest of the place was barren desert. I hailed the satellites, wondering if it'd get us shot, but instead got a vivid text-readout in about a hundred different languages - all the same message. I scrolled as I fought to get our ship on a safe course to land in this wasteland of a planet... then, third-to-last language, I could read.

The zir'ken, I thought in surprise, eyeing the language that was either poorly translated or .. well, maybe I was rusty. The zirs have been here. They were friendly little snakes, sharper than they looked - we'd made friends with them a few centuries back. I knew their language well enough; the message read: "Welcome to Terole. Your spacecraft is not a recognized type; post-landing, proceed to the registration center to record your species, ship, and personnel."

We'd lucked out and fallen out of nullspace practically on top of a merchant planet. Despite the situation, I was pleased - meant I could land us close to the city, which is where the easiest course would put us. We descended roughly, atmospheric turbulence rattling the ship. The pilot was jostled, but stayed unconscious.

The landing was... well, not one of my best ones. Ker-THUD, and there was a lovely cloud of dust. My jaw bounced off the chin-support. By now, I heard my crewmates coming up the corridor towards the cockpit; even deepsleep isn't profound enough to keep a woman from waking up during a landing like that. I was a bit abashed as I took off the p-helm, and my eyes fought to adjust from the 3D display to regular reality.

The medic and our little scientist barged in, both alarmed. I explained what had happened as Med ordered me to help the pilot onto her back; the medquarters were close. I stood and stepped away from the couch-- and promptly weaved right, left, and fell flat on my stomach. I blinked; my muscles felt rubbery.

The mech finally padded in, looking groggy from his abrupt awakening from deepsleep. I told him what happened and said I thought it was some sort of gas leak - concentrated in here, seeping back towards the rest of the ship. Their quarters had been far away, and they weren't suffering a bit.

I tried to get up, and fell over again. Med gave up getting me to help her with the pilot, and the scientist did instead. I laid my head on my forelegs, feeling my eyelids fall low again-- and then howled as a sharp pain shot through my right shoulder. Med bit me!

"Adrenaline," she told me with this ironic grin on her dark-furred muzzle. "Come with me."

I tried to get up. I mostly failed, and wound up getting scruffed and dragged bodily through the corridor and into medquarters. Yes, Med dragged me -and- carried the pilot - we aren't small girls, either, though Med herself is bigger than either of us. Still, the old cat was panting a bit as she told me to lie still. Pilot-tending came first, since I was still conscious. So I listened to the air cycle through the ship noisily, sprawled next to the mattress Pilot was on.

Med shoved a translucent mask over my face and pushed a small tube onto my tongue. "Bite down and breathe," she told me, and I glared. I hate those things. She glared back... and I did as ordered. Med was oldest, and except for Mech, she was biggest - she was in charge when we weren't trading, fighting, or flying. I nearly gagged, though, having to breathe through a tiny tube that was dry and bitter on my tongue.

I don't know how, exactly, but I lost track of the next half-hour; staring blankly ahead, just breathing, not thinking about how close we'd all come to death. If I hadn't fought off sleep to see what was going on in the cockpit... whew.

Med took off my mask. She told me that Mech had found a leak in the air-cycle system in the cockpit - it had been spewing the waste that we breathed out. She said my readings on what I exhaled was about 350% as much as it should have been - density or whatever, I'm no chemist. Mech had gotten things repaired, the air was cleaned out now, and my readings were down to 125% - safe enough. I still felt woozy when I sat up, and Pilot was still out like a light.

"Shake it off," Med grinned at me. "You'll be back to normal in a half hour." I huffed, trying to find my feet and my train of thought all at once. Where were we, if we had fallen out of nullspace en route to our destination?

I managed to stand, my head light and paws heavy - but I was up. Pilot was still unconscious on the sterile black mattress of the convalescent; Med eyed me up and down. "Where do you think you're going?" she asked, skeptical.

I explained that we'd landed, and been hailed by a multilingual satellite. Had to be a mercentile planet, this 'Terole' place. Wasn't much of a resource, unless there was ore under this orange dust. "You knew one of the languages, Am?" she scoffed. I knew she expected a 'no'.

"Sure did," I replied equably. Am was for Ambassador - I was the Xenospeaker, the diplomat, the trader. Plus secondary pilot, but, well, I rarely flew the ship myself. They just liked having a backup. "One of the rougher translations was in zir'kenian."

"The zirs?" Med exclaimed. I felt proud that I'd gotten a shocked look on her old grey and black face. I nodded, then told her what the message read. If I were to play nice, I was needing to find this registration center and input our species data. Med's eyes darkened, but our kind had long since stopped being overly paranoid about other races; it paid to be cautious, but not so much that we were paralyzed in alien relations. We had our share of allies - no intelligent race would pick a fight with us.

Plus, judging from the planet's satellites and the city's structure, their tech was less advanced than ours.

"You're not going alone, Am." Med's voice held that tone that meant she wasn't going to compromise. I snorted at her and stepped into the corridor, then paused to lip the bandages on my shoulder off. I'd stopped bleeding - she hadn't bitten too hard, just enough to wake me up. My tailtips took the slightly stained cloth from my jaws and tossed it at her; she caught it in her own tailtips. She was frowning at me.

I headed down the corridor, back towards the cockpit. I heard the crackle of our in-ship communications come on and sighed. "Mech," came her voice, "you're accompanying the Xenospeaker outside. Bodyguard."

We aren't a sexist race, but we do have some definite advantages that are sex-oriented. For example, Mech was the only male on the ship; his pragmatism and calm head in an emergency made him a great mechanic and engineer. He was also almost a foot taller than me - even had six inches on Med! - and far broader. He was imposing; I wasn't.

Still, I knew how to fight as well as he did, and I was grumpy when he intercepted me as I passed the cockpit, heading for the lower airlock. Mech's a good guy, don't get me wrong - the whole crew fits together like tailtips in a braid. Just-- really? This had to be a diplomatic mission. Looking imposing wasn't good for tact and peaceful intentions.

He had his weapon belt cinched around his haunch, and I sighed but skulked on. Wasn't any arguing with Med, and Mech and I both knew it. He was expressionless as he followed, but just before I could tail the airlock open, he grunted. "No weapons for you?" I could hear the disapproval; I paused and turned my head to answer.

"I'm the pacifist, Mech. I'm going to be talking to new aliens we've never met before. I can't be armed. Goes against my creed."

"Goes against common sense," he retorted, but he didn't stop me this time as I opened the airlock. The second hatch parted, then third and final one slid upwards - only after the first sealed behind us, though. The air was dry, laden with sand-grains and dust, and hot. I coughed, then leapt down the half-dozen feet to the mussed dunes.

I half-shrieked-- the sand burned-- and then sprinted in a plume of orange dust towards the shadows that the gates to the city cast. I don't recall moving that fast in recent years - don't sprint in space - but I was so glad when I hit shade the scalding stopped.

Mech was slower; his paws and hands were bound in the protective fabric that Med usually used for sturdy bandages. Med had probably told him to put them on; maybe she'd told me, too, but I didn't hear. I hadn't been listening in the airlock. To his credit, Mech didn't comment as he joined me in the shade.

We both peered up at the gates. They were thick and quite tall and broad, connecting mostly seamlessly with the similarly high-and-thick wall that enclosed the big city. No sign of any electric or force shields; the gates themselves were metal-reinforced slabs of earth and rock. Mech and I exchanged glances. "These would be impressive," I said conversationally, "if we didn't have our ship behind us."

"No," he answered impassively, "they'd still just be tailmade rocks."

I laughed. Mech and his lack of mysticism. I'd never seen him be awed by anything in all our time spacing together. "So how do we ge--"

The gate creaked, and swung inward. Mech sprang to the ready, his tail dipping down to hover spread tailtips near his weapon belt, head ducking to level with his spine. I was trained to not show such signs of battle preparation; I merely turned my head to watch.

The streets were paved in clay, cracked enough to be cobblestone; in the distance, I could see small structures at the base of the buildings, with awnings, that I presumed were some sort of shops or gathering places, judging by the amount of .. things .. clustered around them. Living things, I mean - aliens - but, wow, what diversity. I was beginning to think all hundred-some of those languages in the satellite were, indeed, necessary.

A creature stepped around the gate from the left. It was a biped, its shoulder higher than Mech's, but even I probably outweighed it twice over. Symmetrical beast, suggesting evolution - hands, talons for feet, flattened feline face, short thick tail. Grey fur, yellow eyes - white fabric around its body. We knew some other races who did that, wore fabric when not wounded - normally meant they were weakhides, that their fur or skin couldn't stand up to the elements.

I glanced briefly past it. The majority of the aliens that I could see were also weakhides, and, incidentally, bipedal.

The grey alien bent over, its eyes on us, then straightened. I had no idea why, but I mimicked the gesture as gracefully as I could. "Peaceful greetings to you," I said in shaky zir'kenian. Mech was silent and motionless, half a length behind me on my right. I wanted to tell him I had no idea how to deal with bipeds - they always had such a different body language than the rest of us. But I didn't want to risk a backwards mutter - too much could be misinterpreted.

It bent over again, less prominently this time. "Forgive, but I speak little this tongue. Know others you?" Its voice was smoother than mine, and I made an effort to keep the gravel out of my tone when I replied with a polite no. The alien didn't show any recognizable emotion. "Please with me walk. The registration center is," and he said a word either I didn't have in my vocabulary, or he mangled it. The gesture with an empty hand behind him indicated a direction. I wondered which of us knew zir'kenian better. It was my sixteenth tongue to learn; I still wasn't fluent in it, just passable. What was it to this alien? Second? Tenth?

The alien started walking after I rotely replied with a polite agreement. Mech and I glanced at each other again, and I followed. He was slower than me, his tail never budging from the ready-to-fight coil, but his body took on a more fluid grace as he moved; I could hear it in the lightness of his steps. That's where Mech and I differed; we'd both had standard combat training, and we'd both had our fair share of scraps in tight corners - but I hid it, and he flaunted it.

The buildings were built upwards instead of lengthwise, and I imagined there were many layers to them, like a tunnel system. Like the gates, they were strengthened by metal but made of clay and rock, all that desert-orange color. There were poles and strings making a haphazard network of lines above us, linking the buildings' open thresholds - not sure if they were windows, or doors - and I wondered why they were there.

Then I saw a sprightly little creature racing along one of the rods, bouncing up and down slightly until it took off in a leap for a rod ten feet higher and diagonal to its original walkway. Ah-hah. Streets for the agile; I was impressed.

Mech followed my gaze and exhaled; it was his way of grunting when an actual grunt would spoil a silence. He was, as ever, unimpressed. It amused me.

The alien stopped outside a round, one-layer building with a large sign in dozens of languages. The zir'ken translation of "Registration Center" was scribbled hastily and still new, the edges not yet worn down by the dusty wind. It was hot and dry in my throat; my kind can live most places, but of them all, deserts are the most inhospitable to us. Mech and I would have to be sure to drink plenty when we got back; it was hard not to pant.

The clay streets weren't quite as hot as the sand outside, but we were all stepping quickly to get into the shade cast by the hovel's awning. My pawpads burned unpleasantly; I should have thought before I leaped. Aren't Xenospeakers supposed to be the prepared ones? I wondered if Mech was amused by the consequences of my rash behavior. Probably not; Med wouldn't be, either, when she had to treat my paws. Sci would laugh at me, though. The thought was consolation - I'd rather be mocked than be frowned at.

The grey creature turned, bent over again and straightened, then spoke. It told me that the world, Terole, kept a database on species - nothing detailed, he assured hastily, just enough to recognize each race on sight and to not mortally offend anyone. Physiological and cultural factoids, along with the basic looks. "Do we have..." I didn't know the word for 'access'. "...ability to read, other species' files? To not offend, also?"

The alien was quick to reassure. Yes, of course we did. Couldn't download any of it, but could read and learn, sure. I wondered if it knew how many little devices I could keep in this well-trimmed mane of mine to copy things that I saw. I didn't let the smirk past my teeth.

We played question-and-answer, and I watched it type in foreign letters the responses that I gave. I asked about the language; Kalash, it said, was the official language, the commoner's tongue, while kusanian was the more sophsticated spacer language. It could give me a file on how to learn Kalash, but not kusanian. I agreed to have it sent to our ship, and it seemed pleased.

It was a short form. Aerhai aren't offended over stupid things, and so I stuck with the standard don't-attack-us-and-we-won't-kill-you warnings. I hadn't known many vulgar or offensive aliens; most, in fact, were overly cautious and painstakingly courteous. I guess the ones that make it to the black skies learn their mortality, and how important friends are out here.

Mech sat stoic as all this went on, and I wondered if the database was actually contained in this little clay-and-rock building. This entire city screamed 'base civilization,' but I watched the interface the grey alien had used to input the information I offered; it was sophisticated. Some high-up race sponsored this wasteland and its merchants, gave them technology, kept them safe. I wondered which race it was.

The alien told me the transmission had been sent. Sci would have received a new plaything on the comps back in the ship; maybe she'd have it all figured out by the time Mech and I headed back. I hoped so; this would be my seventeenth language and, after a while, it just gets tiring to learn more nuances.

Mech and I got back to the ship after leaving the grey alien. It was almost scary how lax the security was - I didn't see a single guard or warning sign near anything, not even the registration center. I mean, my kind can be pretty casual too, but on a city with at least a hundred different races visiting it? It was crazy.

I briefly checked out the nearest little hovel at the foot of a real building. Turns out they're merchant stalls; makes sense, what with the heat of the desert and the likelihood of sandstorms even in the city (the alien had warned us). Appropriately enough for its location, this little stall was selling fabric to go around the face - translucent and loose, to allow sight and breathing, to fit many faces - but to protect from the wind, and the possible duststorms.

Wisely, the merchant in question - the same species as the grey who had greeted us - took barter, not just a form of currency. From what I could tell, he was trying to tell me they were very cheap, so I plucked the band from my mane. It was nothing more than pretty, elastic and threaded with glimmering colors that caught the sun and shone. I offered it to him and motioned for one of the larger face-guards, one that was mostly smoke-grey with some violet mottling. It inspected the band, bobbed its head up and down, and took the face-guard off its hook and handed it to me. I took it in my tailtips and inclined my torso, like the first alien had done; this one seemed to smile (I hope--) and did the same.

"Bipeds fold easily," Mech commented as we walked back towards the gate, my short mane buffeted in the wind and obscuring my vision. I didn't wear the face-guard; he'd called it a shalkra, and I wanted to learn the translation before I did anything with it. Its use seemed obvious, especially judging by the small crowd around that stall and how many immediately wore theirs after trading for it, but I'd rather not risk a cultural offense.

"They'll study that mane-tie," I told Mech, not bothering to reply to his earlier remark. "See what it's made of, how it's made; they'll realize it's not made by machine and wonder at how backwards our kind is." He half-lidded his eyes at me, a calm expression that nonetheless revealed his slight startlement. "That merchant is tied with the rulership of this city, and I can bet you it keeps all the tiny things it gathers to analyze later."

"...huh." It was as close as Mech got to being pensive. We stopped at the edge of the open gates, and I realized they'd only closed them because we had landed. They were normally kept open.

"Trusting city, this," I murmured quietly, eyeing the doors. "Either that, or they have defenses so good that I can't catch sign of them."

Mech grunted. "I can't, either." And he would have been looking as closely as I had, if not moreso.

"Huh," I muttered, then psyched myself up for the brief sprint across scorching sands. Mech started to offer me his paw-wraps, but I was halfway there before he finished his sentence. Impetuous? Well, yeah, but this time, I was just prepared to accept the burn - my own fault, after all.

I ducked into the shadow of the ship, then flinched as the outer airlock opened and stirred up the sand. Reflexively, I clutched the shalkra more tightly in my tail, but the gauzy fabric didn't tear - that was surprising.

Mech joined me then, and we stepped into the airlock, past the second one, and waited for those two to close. When he and I had been wholly shut off from the outside planet, we were sprayed with the cleanmist and dried with a gale-force cycle of air - only then did the innermost hatch open.

Med, Sci, and Pilot were all waiting for us. Pilot looked a little groggy, and she had a monitor strapped to her throat, but she smiled at me when she saw me. Med stepped forward like she was going to scruff me and haul me off to have my paws tended, but I flashed the shalkra at her and it was enough to make her pause.

Sci spoke first in the momentary silence. "I got a transmit from the city's compbase." Ah, technical slang. I could hear Mech exhale one of his silent grunts. "A language file. It's base enough that it fit right into our own translator. Once we're back into nullspace, I'll send it back to Aerhan to be catalogued."

I flicked my ears in acknowledgement. "The language is called Kalash." The dust in my throat made my voice harsh; I coughed and amended my pronunciation, then added, "The common tongue for creatures in this place."

"What -is- 'this place,' Xenospeaker?" asked Pilot. She was being respectful of my authority in this situation - which was nice, because normally I'm the lowest-ranking of us five. We're not much of a merchant ship, and it's playing nice with others that's my specialty.

"Terole. The world of Terole. The city is Nankampi. I think they call the system the Tri-System, but I could be wrong on that. I'll have to look up Bure-Karesh in that file. When will it be finished integrating?" I looked to Sci. She grinned.

"It was done by the time you were cleaned."

I flicked my ears again. I'm not the dominant type, so I wasn't terribly good at taking charge; I knew I'd failed at impressing Med enough, and she'd drag me off to tend me as soon as I stopped talking. Sigh. Well, my paws did still burn, even pressed against the reasonably cool flooring. "I'll take a look at that file momentarily, Sci." I paused. Here was a chance to really take charge and give some orders.

Med noticed my hesitation. "After I tend your paws, you rash cub," she snapped irritably. Sci smirked; she was Med's daughter, so she always seemed glad when Med was annoyed with someone other than her. I suppose it brought us all a little closer together, that Med acted as matriarch to all of us.

Mech exhaled at my hip, and I swear he timed it to make it seem like he was huffing at Med and supporting me. Some males weren't that perceptive or subtle, but I'd learned a long time ago to not underestimate this one.

Pilot was silent, expectant. I swear, she's the only one who really respects my expertise. I took a deep breath. Diplomacy time! "After you so graciously tend my paws," I smiled pointedly at Med, "I'm going to need a day or two to learn the basics of this language. Possibly more, if it's complex, but with so many species speaking it, it's probably about as simplified as languages can be."

Three, two... and there Med began to protest. "Our destination--"

"--can wait, Med," I said softly. She scowled. "We just encountered a new alien race. What's more, we also found dozens of their friends. At this point, our destination has been moved to secondary priority. We just became an ambassadorial ship." My voice didn't waver from quiet and calm.

Sci slowly flicked her ears, agreeing with me. It had been a century or so since the last 'new' aliens were found; we all knew the protocol. Aerhai had been expanding into new reaches of space at remarkable speed, mapping out in fair detail our galaxy and the nearest few. Every ship, even the smallest that only held five, had a trained Xenospeaker. Usually, on the smaller crafts like ours, the Xenospeaker was also trained to do other things, so as to still be useful in normal circumstances. But we were put on our ships just in case something like this happened.

And when it did, my authority was suddenly maxed out. I was head cat.

Med didn't argue my words. She knew she couldn't. I continued.

"Sci, I need you and Pilot to find out if we can set up a nullspace beacon nearby. If so, we'll do that after I'm familiar with the language. I also need all the tracking gadgets we have on-board that I don't know about; I'll be using them to record everything." I don't give orders well, but I thought these went okay; both women flicked their ears. "With any luck, in two days I'll know this language well enough to function in the city; then I'll go back and--"

"With Mech," Med growled. There was no quarter in her eyes.

"--with Mech," I agreed equably, "and start recording. While I'm there, you three can take the ship to a point where we can plant the nullspace beacon, and establish a line there. We can transmit to that as we learn more."

Med's eyes were darkening. "How long do you plan to keep us here, Am?!" she snapped.

I met her gaze evenly, all training in play. She couldn't ruffle me - not now. We'd just discovered -dozens- of intelligent species, almost all of them spacefaring. It was the greatest find since the last colony world, a century and a half ago. "As long as necessary, Med. If this is big enough, they'll want to send someone with more training than I."

Pilot's voice was just as quiet as mine. "It would still be a few planetary months before they could get here... and that's assuming they start out immediately, and can find a safe place to exit nullspace nearby."

Med was not pleased. "Months? At the least?!" She wasn't roaring yet, but her voice was gradually growing harsher. I couldn't blame her for being upset; she'd been looking forward to this trip for months.

"Under the circumstances," I said softly, "there is no way I could allow you and Pilot, Med, to take this ship and continue without us. We need it to access the nullspace beacon, if we can set one up."

"And," Mech spoke in his thunderous monotone, "we'll need it for safety." He was right, of course.

Pilot glanced from Med to me. "What does your training qualify you for, Xenospeaker?"

I couldn't help it; I grinned. "This," I said simply. "There's no precedent for this. All Xenospeakers, except for the professors themselves, have the same amount of training. And because we get sent around so much, I have more experience than most cats my age." Sci huffed; she hated being the youngest, and any mention of age invariably annoyed her.

"What do you think will occur, once they receive our transmission?" I was starting to feel very grateful for Pilot's calm neutrality. That's why she was Pilot - nothing rattled her. Not even the prospect of not flying for months on end.

I considered the question. "They'll gather the names of a specialized team, the best they can get. They'll all learn this Kalash. They'll listen for a while to the reports we send. And if things are going well on our end, they'll probably keep me in charge of it... -if- I make some friends out there. Otherwise, it won't do any damage to remove us, reassign us, and let the old cats take over."

"Any violence on either side," Sci commented, "would ruin all of that." There was a round of ear-flicking agreement.

"We are five," Med growled, "amongst thousands. You saw no sign of security. What is to stop a mob from killing us all?" Pilot pointed at me as a wordless response, and Med fumed. But Pilot was right.

Two days. Two long days, while Mech went over every inch of the ship, checking for landing-induced damage, other gas leaks, and any uncalibrated instruments that may have gone out of whack because of our unexpected drop from nullspace. Sci and Pilot worked well together and found a place not terribly far where we could probably establish a nullspace beacon, assuming no one with particularly potent weapons came along and took offense to a little light in their territory. Med was grumpy; I knew why, and I tried to avoid her. Tails, if someone had told me I couldn't see -my- mate for yet more months, I'd be snarling and white-eyed too! Her husband was a worker on our newest and farthest colony world; we'd been transporting some light-weight but rather valuable cargo to that very colony. It was no mistake that our ship had gotten the job; it was rare for one half of a mated pair to be spacebound and the other landbound, and those who scheduled ships usually made a point to reunite the halves as often as possible. That little colony was becoming a second home to all of us, outside this ship.

Still, the two days that I spent hyped up on antisleep drugs, half-unconscious so that I could better absorb all of the raw information our language-learner was throwing at me... they were long. Some scientists had hypothesized that a normal Aerha could learn no more than twenty languages; that was before some Xenospeakers started fumbling stupidly on their eleventh and twelfth tongues. Now most people believed the utmost limit was around fifteen, and only the first ten or twelve could be learned with perfect fluency.

I was at seventeen. I wondered if my brain would simply forget things, on this one; if I would fail to be able to grasp the complexities, the nuances, of the grammar or pronunciation.

At the end of two days, Sci peeked into my lab. She saw me sprawled bonelessly on my mattress, l-helm still strapped to my face, and once she undoubtably checked to make sure the program had finished, she took it off. I blinked when light came back to my eyes. "You need sleep," she said in a whispery purr.

"Botsa ze cha," I mumbled, "ze ka ngakk fress ng." I paused, then licked my lips. "I mean... I don't need sleep."

"Matri says to either put you to bed," Sci grinned past her confusion, "or to give you a good meal. Which do you want?" I looked at the wire embedded into my forearm; if she took my antisleep current away, I'd be out like a light. Slowly, I lifted my tail, and pulled it out myself, then stood.

"Gratek--... food."

Sci coiled half her tail around my shoulders and neck, then led me out of my lab. Without the current, already I was feeling the exhaustion of staying awake more than fifty hours; we're hardy cats, we are, but we need regular sleep and water to be at our best. Sci's no big cat by any means, the smallest and most slender of all of us, but I found myself leaning against her strength more with each step.

We got to the messpit. There was food on my platter, water in my bowl. I settled onto the mat and drank deeply, slowly, until my body stopped feeling like it was withering in slow motion. Sci stayed with me, her tail companionably twining with mine, and made sure I finished at least half the meal. The water and the hot food was enough to spark me into consciousness for a little while longer.

I looked up, and she pawed my muzzle with a damp cloth draped over her hand. "You're always a mess," she chided, and I just earflicked. I didn't have manners when they weren't required. "We found a place to set up the beacon," she added, a little more quietly. She tossed the cloth away; it was slightly yellowed from the residue of my meal. I hadn't even noticed being messy. "You need to sleep before we abandon you to this place for a few days to set it up."

"We have more than one, don't we?" It was hard to speak my native tongue. I had to think very hard on what the words were, where they went. She noticed, but only replied that we had three nullspace beacons. So we could afford to lose one. Sci nodded, following my unspoken train of thought.

"Four days, we'd be gone. Give or take some hours for us to land so neatly outside the walls. Pilot says it'd be three if we wait three more days."

I didn't have to think about that one. "Then we wait. I want Mech in my lab, learning that language. And while you three are out, I want at least Med to learn it. I want us all to know it."

She flared her whiskers, surprised. "Why?"

I was too tired to explain, or hide my own gut instincts. "I think we'll be handling all of this... at least for a while. I need Mech to know it, if you're leaving him with me." She nodded, then uncoiled her tail from mine to touch the nearby wallstrip. The ship's communications flicked on and lit up the translucent line.

"Mech to Xenospeaker's lab," she projected, and I heard the echo through the corridors. "Current still live," she added.

"Going," came his heavy voice, as though we'd roused him from a nap. I felt a tinge of guilt for putting him through two days of sensory deprivation - and while two days had taught me the entire language, it would at best make him barely functional with it. He'd have to learn quick. I couldn't bring to my sleep-deprived mind any memories of males being Xenospeakers - general consensus said they couldn't be quick-witted enough - but I had faith in Mech.

The wallstrip's light faded as Sci removed her tailtips from the pressure point. She looked at me, considering, then rose and wrapped her tail around my neck. "To sleep with you, Am," she said with finality.

I didn't really remember the seemingly short walk to my quarters. Sci led me to the mattress, eased me down, and pawed the lights low. I think I was unconscious the instant my chin hit my paws, but I remember glimpsing her haunches before she tailed the door shut. I felt gratitude for her help, and then the welcome embrace of sleep long-denied.