Ander laughed suddenly. Stared me in the face and laughed harder. “That’s it! He needed to look crazy. He needed to look crazy enough to plant a bomb aboard a crashlander’s ship!”

All I had for answer was a wordless snarl. Tanj, he could even be right.

Our dinners arrived, and Ander’s chuckle died. He stared at what was on my plate. Crew snapper is a sea creature as big as a short man’s leg, with rows of fins down each side and a jaw built to crush bones. It took up most of the table. It was hideous.

“Have some,” I said. “It’s an order for two.”

We ate in silence for a bit. Ander’s eyes kept straying to the crew snapper. He wouldn’t touch it. He wouldn’t speak of it. Presently he said, “For the record, any further contact with Pierson’s puppeteers?”

I said, “Ander, this was an amazing expenditure just so you can hear Beowulf Shaeffer’s barroom description of a species that no longer deals with any known world.”

Ander Smittarasheed nodded. “What if I say I talked Sigmund Ausfaller out of a free vacation?”

“Maybe, if I didn’t know you were recording.”

He was losing patience. “Any further contact—”

“None. I’ve seen enough kzinti to last me. Don’t they scare the ARM anymore?”

Ander Smittarasheed said, “You wouldn’t remember the old Soviet Union? They used a technical term that translates as ‘neutral.’ ‘Neutral’ was any nation that could not conceivably damage the Soviet Union. Puppeteers think like that. If you can hurt them, you have to be rendered neutral.”

“Better keep an eye on the planets they’ll be passing on their way to nowhere.”

“They’ll be in range of some Patriarchy worlds, including at least three slave species. After that they’re out of known space.”

“And the Core explosion is twenty thousand years away. They’ll have to turn first. Plenty of time.”

“Yah—”

“Ander?” I set down my hashi. “Never mind.”

“What?”

“They’re moving at near lightspeed through normal space? Everything comes on as gamma rays at that velocity! Those planets are repelling gamma rays that’ll make the Core explosion look sickly!”

He stared. “But. They could have built…whatever…built it and never…If they can shield planets against gamma rays, they didn’t need to go!”

I felt a grin pulling my lips way-y-y back. Ander had lost his aplomb. I wondered, “What are they running from, then? What are they up to?”

“Maybe it’s not dependable, this shield. No, that’s stupid,” he said. I dug into my fish, letting him run on. “So…what are they running from?”