The ship spent a number of cycles trying to analyze this before it realized it was a conundrum, to be stored away with such things as Skidoo’s performance. This was the first time the ship had actually dealt with such a number of people at once, and it was finding it very different from any of its projections. The more people there were, the more complicated things became. This feeling was not quite like frustration, because the ship thought that the goal Dabry was describing probably was achievable. Perhaps this feeling was more like being challenged, not in a combative way, but in a friendly way. The way it and its siblings had played back in its childhood, or such a childhood as had been possible to it.

It returned its attention to the conversation.

“Very well,” it said. “Teach me.”

The rest of them waited to see what would happen.

Niko tried to make light conversation with Lolola, but the critic turned away pointedly and stood staring out the window bubble, her face remote and forbidding. Skidoo started to approach her, but Niko’s faint headshake stopped her; instead she turned back to speak with Milly and Atlanta. Gio sat nearby, arms folded and listening.

“Never is being a moment that is not being lively with the captain,” Skidoo said.

“What did you do when you were fighting in her unit?” Atlanta said curiously. She could not picture the Tlellan in battle; the low-slung body and multiple tentacles were not suited to rapid movement. She had not met one before.

“Comms,” Skidoo said. “Is being going here, shooting there.” As she spoke, her tentacles absently explored her surroundings, tasting the flesh of the couch, fingering along Milly’s arm to stroke the feathers into place, another grappling with a floor bud. “And maybe is being a little spying as needed,” she added unexpectedly.

“What?” Atlanta said.

“Is being able to is squeezing into very small spaces. Bones are being artificial, are being retracting and telescoping.”

Atlanta tried to sort out the words. “Your bones are artificial?”

Niko stopped her pacing near them. “Skidoo normally wouldn’t have a bone in her body,” she said. “Much like old Earth octopuses, that could squeeze themselves through any space as large as their eyeballs, the only thing they couldn’t contract. Tlellans have a muscle near the base of each tentacle that can telescope outward through a special channel, gives them skeletal strength in order to move around. Or it can allow her to contract into about the size of, strangely enough, her eyeballs.” She grinned at Skidoo. “Not the strangest aspect of you either, is it?”

“The captain is being referring to the fact that I am being a symbiotic assemblage,” Skid revealed, her tone coy. “My being is being several creatures together.” Her tentacles waved and undulated amiably.

“How can that be?” Atlanta said.