'"So, I know that we're not supposed to tell anybody about them right now," Garth said, "but that just for now, right? Someday, I'm going to tell my kids about the time I met the president."

Richard laughed, wiping his sweating palms on his jeans. They were waiting in the dining hall for Ol-Maran to arrive with the surprise residents of the Beyma. Richard was strangely nervous. "Already thinking about kids, are you?"

"Oh, yeah. They're going to be beautiful. We're going to have three or four." Garth grinned.

Kavita raised her eyebrows. "Wow, a full house. Boys or girls?"

"Boys, girls, nonbinary kiddos," Garth said, "it doesn't matter to us. I mean, I imagine it doesn't matter to us. Haven't quite talked to him about it yet."

"Maybe wait a little while before telling him you're populating your future home with tiny Garths," said Richard.

"I'm probably going to have to learn something about sports to raise kids, though, right? I didn't do sports except for a couple of years of baseball, but it's probably good for their social development?"

"Probably," said Richard.

"Jeez, stop giving me unsolicited parenting advice." Garth punched Richard in the arm. "This is stuff for me and Kin to figure out, you creep."

Richard scowled at his friend, rubbing his arm. "You're the one who—"

"Shh! It's them!" Garth sprang to his feet, starting toward the nav pod. The doors had slid open, revealing Ol-Maran and the three Chorodonians, who were dressed in flowing robes. There had been soft conversation in the dining hall among the other Karra assembled there; Aialo-El was the only one who was not present, since they had stayed back to pilot the ship. But as the Chorodonians entered the room, all conversation stopped.

Garth strode toward the strangers, already chattering excitedly. Richard looked around the room, catching wary expressions on the faces of all of the Karra there. He glanced at Kavita, who also looked uncertain.

"Shall we?" he asked.

"I guess so," she replied, slipping her hand onto his elbow. "Wow, this is a little weird."

"Well, at least it doesn't look like they have guns. That's an improvement." Richard started toward Ol-Maran and the Chorodonians. As he approached, he could hear Garth complimenting the Chorodonians' garments.

"I have got to get me one of those," he said. "I love it—the swishing, very dramatic. Oh, and this is Richard, and this is Dr. Das."

"Kavita," she said, smiling at the Chorodonians. "I think hurtling through space together must make us friends."

The youngest of the Chorodonians made a strange sound, a rattle deep in her throat. "Yes, it must," she said. "I'm Shashi. This is my mother, President Vaivala, and this is Wessona. You can call her Auntie."

Wessona clicked, shaking her head. "Please do not call me Auntie."

"I do." Shashi frowned at the ambassador.

"I know, and it is most frustrating." Wessona touched Shashi's cheek with one hand, affectionate despite her words. She had just three fingers; up close, the comparison between the Chorodonians and crabs or insects held strong. Their skin seemed quite firm, as if they might have exoskeletons. Certain parts of their bodies, like the edges of their hands, were fringed with fine hair.

Shashi leaned her face into Wessona's hand for a second, then turned to the humans. She addressed Richard, her eyes wide and sparkling. "You're the one I met in the hallway! I'm sorry. I think I scared you."

"You did," he replied. "I didn't expect to meet you."

"Please accept our apologies," said President Vaivala, reaching out her hands. With some hesitation, Kavita took them, responding to the warm gesture with a smile. Vaivala continued, "We were under strict orders to stay in our quarters." She slid a disapproving glance toward her daughter.

"Which we did, for approximately six million years," Shashi retorted without missing a beat. "All I wanted was a little exercise."

"Personally, I'da given anything to see Richard's face when he bumped into you," said Garth. He laughed, and Kavita and Shashi joined him. Even Richard grinned.

He stepped back, gesturing with an arm at the group of Karra standing together a short distance away, watching their exchange with obvious curiosity. "There are a lot of people who want to meet you," he said. "Shall I help with introductions?"

The Chorodonians' universal translators were not unlike the Karra's, silver crescents nestled against their heads behind the bony ridge fringing their brow. They met the Karra one by one, greeting them warmly. They were received with hesitant friendliness by the uncertain Karra, and as the Chorodonians made their rounds, they shifted seamlessly between Karran and English.

It had only taken a couple of days for Richard to get used to living on the Karran vessel the first time, when it had been parked in a crop circle just inside a cornfield. It took as little time for him to get used to living on the vessel in space. The Chorodonian surprise was just another punch of several with which he had rolled.

And that was very strange. Richard was not a man who fought back against the punches life threw at him, but he wasn't one who really rolled with them, either. He dealt with surprises and misfortunes with grudging acceptance at best and existential despair at worst, so why was he doing so little freaking out?

Richard knew that they were running for their lives, so it wasn't that he was not afraid. Of course he was afraid. There was a very real sense that the Chorodonians—the bad ones—would catch up with them any day, any hour, and his life was in every bit as much danger as anyone else's on the ship.

Yet, once they had cleared Earth's atmosphere and settled into their journey to the stars, they had eased back into a routine, and it all started to feel rather...normal. Even the Chorodonians' presence now seemed unexpectedly normal, and before the day was out, Richard settled right back into a routine.

They ate: the humans joined the Karra and the Chorodonians in the dining hall for two meals a day.

They slept: Richard and Garth were roommates in space as they had been on Earth, and Kavita had quarters to herself.

They talked: all of the humans practiced what little of the Karran language they'd learned, and they learned more about one another, too, in long conversations that helped them while away the hours. They picked up a word or two of the Chorodonian tongue.

And they played. Sometimes, there was music. Garth, who had no sense of shame, supplied most of this himself. He'd been a percussionist of middling skill in school, so he accompanied his own singing voice with his own drumbeats. Despite Garth's cajoling, Richard could not be convinced to participate in the music because there wasn't any alcohol on board with which to lubricate his vocal chords, but, once in a while, Kavita could be convinced to participate. Shashi was perhaps the most enthusiastic music-maker of them all; none of the humans dared to let on that her voice wouldn't win her any Grammys on Earth.

There were games, too. The Karra were especially fond of a board game called eshbra, which was similar to Chinese checkers, and then there was the ashastanr dice game Garth couldn't stop playing. Richard had never been much of a card sharp or a chess player, but in some of the quieter moments, he wished he had access to a Monopoly set or something a bit more familiar.

Richard, no longer able to spend his days carefully assembling solar cells, focused on stimulating his mind in other ways. He worked with Ol-Maran to monitor the generators on the ship, tracking their cells to ensure that they were still working effectively and to make certain there was nothing that would endanger the ship's ability to keep moving.

Before long, Ol-Maran began to show Richard how to operate the spaceship. Once their course was set—which was a one-time effort—the job of piloting the vessel was mostly monitoring different screens and controls. Richard could sit there for hours in companionable silence with Ol-Maran, watching the endless stars creep past them. It was a meditative loop of stargazing and then checking the navigation panels, stargazing and then checking.

Often, Richard went to the greenhouse wing of the spaceship. Second to the co-pilot's chair, this had quickly become his favorite place on board. He hadn't realized until he'd been cooped up in a spaceship for weeks how much he depended upon his limited engagement with nature. The intermittent glimpses of grass and trees and flowers, the fresh scent of sunshiney air or even of rain, the cheerful chirping of a bird; these things had seldom registered for Richard while he was on earth, but now, in memory, they made him feel human.

The greenhouse was where all of the fresh food onboard the Beyma was grown. There were long, tall shelves spanning the space like the stacks of books in a library, and all of them were overflowing with plants of every shade imaginable, some of them leafy, some of them trailing, some of them laden with heavy berries, some tangled with curling vines. The vines were Richard's favorite. There was one that responded to his touch: when he brushed his finger gently along its leaves, it folded them up daintily and drew its vines closer to its stalks as if retreating from social interaction.

"Same," Richard murmured companionably to the plant.

"Come to explore the jungle?"

Startled, Richard snatched his hand back from the vines, turning to see Kavita watching him from behind an enormous, leafy bush. "No, just—walking," he said.

She chuckled. "It's not against the rules to poke the plants, Richard." Stepping carefully around the bush, she approached him, looking over his shoulder at the trailing plant. "I think that one's my favorite."

"Isn't it? It's mine, too." He turned back, smiling at the knot of vines, all curled up like the toes of a ticklish baby. "I've heard there are plants on earth that respond to being touched, but I've never seen one."

"Really? I used to have Venus flytraps. Not that I encourage touching them for fun; if you bother them too much to make them close their jaws, they'll end up digesting themselves and getting sick."

"Oh. That's...really quite awful."

"I do love it in here. You don't realize how much you miss green things until you've got to do without them for a while."

"I was just thinking about that. I hardly ever spent a minute outside if I could help it, but here I am, wandering among the plants. I miss the smell. That outdoors smell, you know? Cut grass. Rain."

"I miss the breeze. I've only got a little apartment, but I have a balcony where I can do some gardening. Just in pots, you know. Tomatoes, some peppers, some flowers. It's lovely to sit out there with a good book and just feel the breeze and watch the bumblebees poking around in the flowers."

"That's lovely." Richard meandered a few steps along the row. "Garth and I have a house with a whole yard—nothing enormous, but certainly bigger than what's typical where I grew up. It's never even occurred to me to start up a garden."

"Well," she said, "that's something to do when you get home. Start small: just some flowers. Or tomatoes. Tomatoes are easy."

"Maybe I will." Richard smiled, looking at Kavita for a moment. "How long do you think it will really take before we can get home?"

She shook her head, her gaze drifting. "I wasn't lying to you, Richard. I honestly don't know."

"You haven't had any super secret Alliance councils without us since we blasted off?"

"Not a one." She smiled, shaking her head at him. "You really do give me more credit for this spy business than I deserve."

There was a footstep close at hand. Richard turned to see Ol-Maran stepping into the aisle where they stood between two towering walls of green. Shashi trailed him. By now, Richard had grown familiar with the young Chorodonian's expressions; her narrowed eyes and the twitching of her fingers revealed her excitement.

"Hello," said Kavita warmly. "We were just admiring the greenhouse. It's such a lovely place to walk."

"I am in agreement," said the first officer. "It is among my favorite locations on the ship. It reminds me of my homeland."

"I love those vines!" Shashi cried, rushing over with a clatter of claws. She reached out to very gently brush the leaves of a trailing stalk. It shivered and began to curl up, twisting itself up into a knot.

Richard watched her, his heart twisting strangely in his chest as he remembered that Ol-Maran's homeland had been overtaken by the Chorodonians. What a bittersweet thing to remember.

"I have come to advise you that we are approaching the Martian Outpost," they continued. "We will be able to acquire elar gas when we have landed. Thenceforward, our travel will be much faster."

"Oh, excellent!" Richard said, clapping his hands together. "That's great news. How long until we land?"

"Seven million years," said Shashi. "I've been waiting forever."

"Approximately one hour," said Ol-Maran. They looked at Shashi with what might have been amused patience. "We will await permission to occupy one of the space station's platforms once we are within hailing distance. You may wish to conclude your walk in the greenhouse and return to an area where you may be seated securely."

"A very good idea," said Kavita. She grinned, slipping her hand through Richard's arm, and turned to Shashi. "Let's go to the Bridge. Shall we? I don't want to miss this."