Enos was still suspicious and wasn’t afraid to speak out. Not unexpected from a man boasting more trips per annum south of the ice line than any of the others.

“How come we haven’t heard of you before? Or your town.”

She pursed her lips again. Repetition hadn’t yet made her explanations sink in. She tried a different tact.

“Well, if the mountains weren’t so high and the passes so treacherous, as unfortunately my partners found out, I’m sure my people would have made contact a long time ago,” she told them. “The only way we heard of you was that the ‘sleepers’ as you call them, could pick up our transceiver call.”

“Constructs pick that up too,” Nur bek Nur noted darkly.

“I hear they only pick up trinary,” she replied. “Not basic radio, unless you know better?”

He shrugged.

“What makes you think that we can do what you want us to?” Teffa, absently rubbing her ample belly, wanted to know.

“We don’t make a big splash, try to grab big things. We avoid them and they don’t notice us,” she said, in a voice that spoke of smugness and pleasure with her own personal success. “You should too, if you want to keep living.”

Too bad you were caught anyway.

“You’ve all been to the south,” Althea asserted, her gestures wide enough to include them all. “And you’ve all come back. That’s the kind of experience I’m looking for.”

Nur bek Nur continued to pick at his nails with a large, curved knife blade. He pointed it at Traejan, who offered a scowl.

“I still don’t like having them around,” he said with a sneer, waving the blade at Kyso, cursing them. “Damned sleepers.”

Althea heard Kyso’s harsh intake of breath at the baiting beside her, continued to stare down the man.

“They happen to be the best people around to analyze what we find down there,” she told the gathering. Even a couple of them had to agree, nodding “And besides, they’ve got a working lifter.”

Peca’s coal black eyes opened wide.

“I ain’t heard of that.”

“We just had it put together,” She turned to a beaming Kyso. “Have it running with nine thrusters, should carry five or six tons against a stiff wind.”

That, and a down payment of trilium – a couple grams each, finally won them over – and the deal was set. They’d all be ready the next morning to meet in the pass south of town.

Traejan watched them shuffle out, closed the door behind the last.

“The Ginga’s going to know about this,” he told her.

“Which ones are going to tell him?” she asked. Traejan had talked about the thug leader all the way into town.

“Maybe all of them,” he told her. “If he doesn’t know already. I still don’t think that those are the people you want.”

She pushed her chair back, sat up straight, achingly stiff.

“We’ll have to find a way to work with them. I need them all.”

A sudden, sharp pain in her stomach told her she needed food as well, desperately, immediately.

“Traejan, could you go get me something to eat – please – now?”