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  Most of the twins’ hosts had specific duties. Some were particularly skilled at a particular function of the city, but all at least took turns doing most tasks.

  The twins observed their hosts in several of the jobs but were never invited to help. They had tried asking tons of questions, but finally Kushtaka had asked them not to, because they were interfering with the work. Murel told her that they only wanted to know about the jobs in case they could help, but Kushtaka pointed out that as seals, they would find working many of the controls difficult, if not impossible.

  When Murel and Ronan first arrived in the city, they were surprised to find that they did not change into human form. Kushtaka had explained that it was due to the extreme density of the air in the city-ship. Both the alien “otters” and the twins could breathe it as well as swim in it: although it contained enough oxygen to sustain them, it was “wet” enough that the twins retained their seal form while within the city’s bubble and did not change as they normally did when out of the water. They didn’t fully understand her explanation, but as long as the unusual atmosphere kept them alive, that was all that counted. However, not being able to help out was rather dull, so after the novelty of living as seals in a bubble in space wore off, the twins slept a lot, unless their particular friends among the alien crew were available.

  The deep sea otters’ city-ship must have been much faster than the Piaf, because it seemed to take them far less time to reach Versailles Station than when they’d traveled with Marmie on her ship.

  The station looked just as it had when they’d first arrived. Like the deep sea otters’ vessel, it had lights, but instead of swirling in spirals, they were gridded and symmetrical. They knew the top level was Marmie’s main home, with its comfortable mansion, adjustable climate, and the artificial river and pool she had installed just for them. It was hard to imagine going back there and seeing the place without Marmie, Pet, or Johnny.

  How are we going to dock? Murel asked.

  We can’t dock in a dry place, Mraka told her. But our hunting device is actually a modified transport beam. We have reconfigured it to perform its original function, so it can insert you into the station once the hatch is open.

  If we can get them to open the docking bay, Ronan said. One thing that made this whole mission so awkward was that the city-vessel was truly alien in a galaxy whose people and technology all reflected post-Terran human colonization. The deep sea aliens couldn’t communicate with regular humans, and had no devices that would allow the twins to do so either.

  They are your species, are they not? Kushtaka said. Can you not speak to their minds and tell them you need access?

  We don’t do mind control, Murel said indignantly. We only use telepathy to talk to other creatures when we’re in seal form.

  You are now in seal form and they are certainly other creatures, Kushtaka pointed out. I see no problem.

  We haven’t tried to use telepathy with other humans except Da and sometimes Mum, Ronan told her. Usually we just talk to them. I suppose it’s worth a try, isn’t it, sis? If you and me and Sky and maybe even Kushtaka’s people focus on the idea of the hatch opening, maybe someone will decide it’s time for routine maintenance.

  Kushtaka’s people weren’t interested, however, and weren’t sure what was being asked of them. Ronan and Murel tried to concentrate, but it gave them a bit of a headache to try so hard to send to some unknown person over what was still a considerable distance, through the city’s force field and the space station’s hull.

  Sky sat on his hind legs, shifting his upper body from side to side as he peered at the closed hatch, watching it closely to make sure it didn’t open without him seeing it do so.

  I hope nobody sees us and decides we’re hostile and fires on us, Murel said.

  I don’t think they have any long-range weapons on the station, Ronan told her. If they do, nobody mentioned it. And if they send a shuttle out to investigate, we may be able to use telepathy on whoever is aboard.

  Or wave at the robot cameras in a friendly fashion at least, Murel said, flapping her flipper up and down. Yoohoo, we’re sentient seals lost in space and could use a lift, thanks ever so much. I don’t see how we’re to manage this one.

  You need not concern yourselves over that, Kushtaka told them. We have been cloaked since we first approached. Unfortunately, this does make it difficult to convey to the space station that we require them to open their shell so we can deliver you. Perhaps if we could take you somewhere that had a sea like our own? We cannot linger here long.

  Alert! The otter in the sursurvu announced to the city at large, All personnel return to your duty stations. Another vessel approaches.

  IT PROVED TO be a large luxury liner, and it sailed right past the hovering home of the deep sea otters.

  They could not intercept the communications between the new ship and the space station, but as soon as the ship was in position to dock, the hatch opened to admit it. The city-vessel followed right on the liner’s tail, ready to insert the twins and Sky into the hatch with the whirlpool hunting/transport beam.

  Couldn’t you just zip past the other ship and enter ahead of it? Murel asked nervously. The idea of riding the beam seemingly unprotected through open space alarmed her.

  There are several reasons why we cannot, Kushtaka told her. We would have to accelerate in order to pass the ship but would have insufficient time and space to decelerate for a safe landing. Even if that were not a problem, there is the difficulty that the ship might ram us or land on top of us, though we would have to decloak when we land. But last and most important, if we go inside the station with the large ship behind us, we will be trapped there. The beam is the only way we can effect your entry.

  But how can it work? Murel wondered. With no gravity or suits or anything? Won’t the water freeze in space?

  The beam was originally designed for space, as we told you, sister seal, Puk assured her. Our people use it all the time—or that’s what the stories say, at least.

  You do understand we’ll die if it doesn’t work? Ronan asked. I wouldn’t like to be the main late lamented character in the story you tell later about how it didn’t work after all.

  It is a slide, Sky told him, his sleek body quivering with anticipation. Slides always work.

  We have to try, Murel decided. We can’t come this far and then give up because we are too scared. Marmie may not be scared, but I bet the little kids from Halau are.

  Too bad Kushtaka doesn’t have a normal com system here that people could understand, Ronan said. We could just hail the station, tell them what’s happened, and go home.

  As they spoke, they were positioning themselves close to the pool of what looked like ordinary water. That was where the beam would start once Mraka and Puk activated it.

  The new ship is entering now, Kushtaka told them. This is the proper time. Mraka, Puk, now!

  The pool emptied into a swirling light-filled column that snaked past the hull of the other ship and into the station’s docking bay. It looked extremely insubstantial.

  Count to three, Murel said.

  You going first or shall I? Ronan asked.

  A sleek brown form shot past them both. Hah! Sky cried. Good sliiiiide!

  Ready, set, go! the twins said together, and jumped into the beam after him.

  It had its own gravity and its own temperature control, and was overall a much more complex instrument than the tame whirlpool it seemed back on Petaybee. It supported them until they slid onto the deck, wet from the beam, bumping up against Sky, who had slid to a stop next to an already docked shuttle.

  In the center of the bay, only one technician saw them as they flopped across the floor on flippers and belly to cover, where they could change into their dry suits.

  He blinked once, then was called to task by a coworker and returned his attention to helping the big ship dock.

  Peering around the docked shuttle, Murel saw Sky watching the big ship get berthed. Once mo
re the little otter stood on his hind legs and did his cute back and forth examination of the people who had finally come to look at the adorable otter. He kept saying “Hah! Hah!”

  That was when the twins decided to run out into the bay yelling, “Sky! There he is! Bad otter, Sky, running away from us like that.”

  “You kids need to get yourselves and your animal out of here,” the bay chief told them, striding up. “This is no playground.”

  “We know that, sir. Sorry, sir.”

  “They got the otter, sir, but what about the seals?” the technician who had seen them asked.

  “What seals?” his boss demanded. “This is Versailles Station, Conrad. Not Sea World. Get a grip.”

  The chief walked away shaking his head over the way some people let their kids run wild, but Conrad watched Ronan and Murel suspiciously as Sky hopped onto Murel’s shoulder and they headed for the nearest com room to carry out their mission, rushing too fast to note the designation of the new ship or to see the first of the company brass disembark.

  CHAPTER 3

  BY THE TIME the Piaf docked at Gwinnet Incarceration Colony, the ship’s cat, Zuzu, and her mistress, Adrienne, had abandoned their attempts to have the cat act as morale officer for the Kanaka children trapped aboard the liner when the Company Corps impounded it.

  Zuzu liked the children and did not like to hear them cry, but she wanted to cry too, seeing the soldiers’ heavy boots stomp past and hearing them bark orders at her friends. She spent much of her time huddled beneath whatever bunk or chair Adrienne chose.

  When the ship docked and the soldiers clamped restraints on Adrienne’s hands and shackles on her feet before leading her and the other crew members away, Zuzu stayed huddled. A long time had passed without anyone returning before she crept out and slunk from one cabin to the next trying to find someone she knew.

  Only the lounge seemed to be occupied. The children were there, but they were strangely quiet, where only a few minutes ago Zuzu had heard them screaming and crying for their mothers. None of the mothers were there, though three female soldiers stood among the small quiet bodies that lay on the bedding in the middle of the lounge, all breathing, Zuzu noticed, all apparently sleeping.

  Zuzu slunk around the wall and the corner of the huge tank that had been used to hold first the sea turtles and then the sharks from Halau, where her crew had also rescued the children and their families. It was a good hiding place. She could watch without being seen, and felt safe enough to grab a quick nap before she heard the tramp of boots once more in the Piaf ’s corridors.

  Where was the crew? Adrienne, Steve, Madame, no one was returning? Only the soldiers? Zuzu wanted to cry. She had been with Adrienne since she was a tiny kitten. Adrienne loved, fed, and protected her. All of the crew were her friends, but Adrienne was her special friend, the closest to a mother she remembered. Like the children in the lounge, Zuzu was suddenly orphaned.

  The Piaf had been her home most of her life too, but she could not stay here while the soldiers ran it. Many of them smelled bad, spoke loudly and angrily, and stomped around so much she was glad she didn’t have a long flowing tail, like some cats.

  Her tail was a tidy curl atop her rump, the legacy of ancestors who were Japanese bobtail cats, a very superior and elevated sort of feline. She had never met one, but Adrienne told her about them and assured her that hers was a distinguished lineage.

  A little dark woman came aboard with the soldiers and marched from child to child, inspecting each one. Then, with something in her voice that sounded like Zuzu felt when the food in her dish was not her favorite flavor, the woman said, “The transport is ready for these children. They may all go to the island.”

  “Mama!” a kit barely old enough to say the word screamed, and hauled at the little dark woman’s trousers with his grubby fist.

  “Be still, child,” the woman said. “Your mama is not coming back to the ship. If you want to see her again, you must follow the nice corporal and do exactly as she says. She will take you on a nice ride to somewhere that you can play while you wait.”

  The female soldiers lined the children up and herded them out of the lounge. This time Zuzu followed, slinking, crouching, hiding behind things and under things until the last child and then the little dark woman were leaving the ship. Taking her life in her own paws, Zuzu whispered out behind them. She did not follow the children to the waiting flitter, however. It would not be going where their mothers were, and so it would not go where Adrienne and the crew were. She did not like the little dark woman, but the woman seemed to know things. She strode toward a building with two tiers of lights from the portholes and a great many more lights strobing the ground between the building and a high fence.

  At a gate, the small dark woman showed a tag she wore around her neck to the guard, and he opened the gate, not noticing anything so small and stealthy as a brown-and-gray mottled cat who slipped in at ground level on the heels of the woman. “Welcome to Gwinnet, Dr. Mabo,” he said politely.

  WHEN AISLING TOLD him that she had seen his kids swimming out into the river, Sean Shongili swam as fast as a seal possibly could, but he was not fast enough. The kids had a substantial head start on him, hours since the time Aisling had seen them and Sean awoke to notice that they were gone. It was a long swim out to the coast, and though he called them repeatedly, he received no answer.

  An hour or so before he reached the coast, he was suddenly pushed back by a high tide of salt water. He felt the alarm of other sea creatures in the vicinity, as well as Nanook and Coaxtl. Surfacing, he saw the cats, colored lights washing over their fur, lift their whiskered faces to watch the city-vessel of the alien otters spinning upward, brightly lit, into the still-dark sky.

  He did not need to ask anyone whether Ronan and Murel were on board the departing vessel. He knew they were, even though he had vetoed the idea when they brought it up. When they returned, he would have a serious talk with them. Just because they had been sent on one mission on behalf of the planet didn’t mean they were to rush off and try to solve every difficulty that arose without consulting their parents, particularly when their plan of action had already been disapproved.

  Sean continued on to the coast, this time swimming in mid-channel, keeping in sight of Nanook and Coaxtl. Once there, he found Sky’s otter relatives and learned the details of the situation that his intuition had already outlined. At Sky’s request, the sea otters had gone to the deep sea otter den and asked them to come for the twins, who had enlisted the help of Petaybee’s long-established but newly discovered residents.

  Why did the deep sea otters go along with it? Sean asked. Our family has already caused them quite a lot of bother, the children particularly so.

  For home, the otters said. River seal children went for home. Deep sea otters went for home too.

  Naturally, Sean replied, wondering why he’d been so dense. He still wasn’t thinking of Petaybee’s oldest residents as having the same connection with the world that the others did, but they would, wouldn’t they?

  He turned and swam back upriver. There was nothing else to do about the kids now, except tell Yana, and he felt somehow she would already know by the time he returned.

  Halfway back to the cave, he saw the company troop ship preparing to land. That was quick, but then this whole anti-Petaybean operation, including Marmion’s arrest, was actually a political maneuver and quite illegal. They would want to achieve their objectives quickly before their actions could be discovered, questioned, or countermanded. The people of Kilcoole were hidden and had a further escape route through the caves if need be. Folk in the more remote villages would not be so well prepared. Electronic communications could be intercepted, with the ship having landed. When the PTBs didn’t find the people they were seeking, they would not be above seeking other people to use as hostages.

  An underground river system had guided him to outlying areas in the past. One entrance to it opened nearby.

  Go to Clodagh,
he told the cats. Let no one follow you or see you enter the caves. Tell Clodagh I am going to warn the other villages that the troops have landed. No one else need go overland and risk themselves.

  You hide best of all men, Nanook agreed.

  They would not leave him yet, however, and paced beside him as he swam upriver another hour and a half to the entrance to the cave. When he stuck his head out of the water long enough to say good-bye, Nanook was crouched on the bank as if ready to fish him out. Coaxtl sat on her haunches, looking up at a sky newly white with falling snow.

  “The home hides us,” the snow leopard told him.

  MARMION HAD SEEN only the presentable parts of the Gwinnet facility in the past. To the surprise of her escort, she had nevertheless been able to ask questions and make recommendations to better the lives of the souls incarcerated there. What only a very few trusted friends knew was that Marmion was not the stranger to prison they imagined.

  Although her name was a venerable one, her father and mother had supported the wrong candidates in one of their world’s many violent and bitter political feuds. Her parents’ candidate had been murdered and all of his supporters killed, tortured, or imprisoned and their lands confiscated. The women’s section of Nouveau Bastille Moonbase had figured in some of Marmion’s earliest memories. She had lived there with her mother until she was seven years old. One day, a guard brought a man in the uniform of a fleet commander and his wife to her mother’s cell. This couple could not have children of their own, so they proposed to take Marmie from the prison and raise her as their daughter, since her own parents had proved to have such poor judgment that they could no longer provide a decent life for her.