“Talk to your captain, Elvirasanchez. It will take only a moment. We have no formal contract, but it might be said that you owe me this.”

“I’m still not sure—”

A piercing whistle punctured the resulting silence. Single- and multiple-lensed eyes turned. Three guards stood between an air-defense ship and a shuttle. They were gesturing frantically while whistling and clicking at the top of their range.

Lights winked on inside the monsters’ shuttlecraft, blinked several times. A slow whine started from its stern. Somewhere a horn hooted violently and confused whistles rose from all around the hangar.

No time remained for argument. Loo made a gesture Ryo did not recognize, then shouted, “Come on! We’ll argue about it later!”

Even as they hurried up the boarding ramp, it was starting to retract Inside, everything was confused and out of place to Ryo’s eyes. Monsters moved rapidly around him, through corridors far too high and narrow. Everything seemed backward, distorted, an imager’s nightmare vision of what a real ship should look like.

He stayed close to Loo and Bonnie, afraid of losing himself in that distorted interior. Loo threw himself into one of the tiny saddles and began exchanging complex words with another monster seated nearby. Despite months of study the phrases’ meaning eluded Ryo.

“They’ve just seen us,” the other monster told Loo after concluding the barrage of technical talk. “What about the hangar doors?”

“No time!” came the word from over the internal communicator. Ryo recognized the captain’s tone.

Alien words flew around the chamber. “What’s the bug doing here? … Wants to come with us … What, but why? … Wants to … worry about it later … No time … How do we get out of here? … One way, hang on! … Open and closed! …” And other exclamations Ryo had neither the wherewithal nor the time to translate.

Thunder rattled the shuttle and Ryo found himself thrown to the deck. The sudden movement was not taken out of disregard for his safety; several monsters were likewise dumped on their abdomens.

Something under Ryo’s feet went rhooom! and for a moment every light in the chamber went out. He fought to regain his balance. It sounded like the ship had been hit. In fact, the opposite was true.

The guard in the fringe tower had reacted to the basewide alarm, but no one had bothered to tell him what the alarm was about. He thought it likely to be another drill.

This illusion was violently and unexpectedly dispelled by the geyser of metal and plastic fragments that erupted from the far side of the base. Without warning, a ship hung in the center of the falling shower of splinters. It was bigger than any shuttle he’d ever seen and showed only two wings. A bright glow emanated from one end.