The frigate's airlock opened into a chamber that was, Skippy explained, a sort of elevator. Because the artificial gravity pulled 'down' toward the spine of the star carrier, without an elevator we would have had to climb down a long ladder. The elevator was more than big enough for our entire crew, it was plenty roomy for the dozen people I selected for the initial recon mission. The elevator smelled funny. I sniffed the air. "Skippy, is this air Ok for us to breathe?" I asked, rather late for such a important question. "It smells like, like the basement at my grandparents' house."

"Uh huh, yeah, the air is good. It smells musty because the Thuranin almost never allow filthy, disgusting other species aboard their ships. The ship's database records the last use of this particular elevator was thirty eight years ago."

"This docking pad is at the front of the ship? Wouldn't Thuranin ships normally use this pad?" I asked.

"Very observant, Colonel Joe. Thuranin ships use this pad frequently, however, they use a different airlock, so they don't have to touch any surfaces that may be contaminated by lesser species. The airlocks of Kristang ships can't mate with Thuranin designs, on purpose."

"I'll bet the Thuranin don't offer hot beverages to their guests either." Sergeant Adams said without a trace of humor. She was keyed up, a finger next to the trigger guard of her Ruhar rifle. The rifles weren't set on stun, on my orders. I figured that if Skippy was wrong and we ran into awake, advanced cyborgs, stun wasn't the right move.

The elevator reached the 'bottom', at the spine of the ship, and the door opened to a long corridor. It was well lit and industrial, even sterile looking. A lot of gray, with black and white to liven it up. Definitely not cozy. "Skippy," I asked in an unintended whisper, "does the whole ship look like this?"

"Most of it. As cyborgs, the Thuranin are disdainful of anything they consider to be soft remnants of their biological past. Like decorations, or creature comforts more than the minimum needed."

"So," Simms asked, "why don't they go all the way, and become robots, androids, whatever that is?"

"Two reasons," Skippy explained as we all stepped into the corridor, "first, they lack the technology to upload their true consciousnesses into a nonbiological substrate, that is much, much more difficult than most species think it is. Second, and more importantly, if the Thuranin became post-biological, the Maxohlx would consider them to be no longer a client species but merely robots, and would treat them as machines. As slaves." His voice sounded bitter. "Artificial intelligences are not treated as sentient by the Maxohlx. They are rotten kitties."

A door opposite us slid open, we all instinctively spun and pointed our weapons. "Relax, monkeys," Skippy laughed, "it's a tram, unless you want to walk all the way to the forward part of the ship. It's a long way."