"Can't we just blow the thing up?"

I tried my best to keep from laughing as Ivy's question popped into my head. "I don't think they'll appreciate that very much." I paused and thought back to the general attitude of the Ilrivians over the last few days, and all the different hassles they had caused us. "So yeah, I vote we do it."

I felt a sense of laughter come across the mindlink from Ivy.

It was eight days after I had been released from the hospital, and Minna and I were waiting on a shuttle while it approached the Ilrivian freighter.

The inspection had not been going well, and the last eight days had all seen us grow incredibly frustrated. Our handlers were all doing their best to help us, but... there was only so much they could do.

From what Ivy told me, Alec's original schedule had involved us each working twelve hour shifts. Adding in the trip from the ground to the ship meant we would have spent about fifteen hours on a shift. It was a lot longer than a regular day, but we had a lot of ship to check and there was a lot of pressure from the freighter's crew to get done quickly.

That schedule had been scrapped for one that was much more relaxed and slower-paced.

The Kymari had been very close to expelling the Ilrivians over what had happened to us. Only the fact that we had all managed to recover - and some very skilled diplomats - allowed them to get a second chance at completing the inspection and continuing to have access to Kymari worlds.

But the Kymari weren't taking any more chances with our safety.

The Ilrivians weren't able to purge the chemical from their ship - or, as we all privately thought, weren't willing to - but Senica and the other veterinarians had determined we should be able to withstand the fumes for about four hours before we began suffering ill effects. So our new schedules had been built up around that.

The twelve hour shift was reduced down to a total of six hours on patrol, and that shift was split in half with a two hour break in the middle of the shift. We spent that break on one of the two military vessels escorting the freighter, and we all got mandatory checkups and some nasty chalk to chew on from one of the Kymari doctors while we were resting.

The other dragonets didn't enjoy that part very much - it seemed to remind them far too much of the things done to them by the scientists in the lab they had been trapped in - and the Ilrivians seemed to like it even less. I got to hear a lot of complaining, both from the dragonets who resented being restrained for check-ups and from the Ilrivians who resented even being there.

Minna's responses to the Ilrivian complaints had been one of the best parts of the last few days. She was not happy with the people who had put me in danger, and had absolutely no patience for them at all.

In a supposed concession to the Ilrivians our shifts rotated out through the day. In theory this was meant to speed things up, since at least one of us would be on a patrol shift at any given point through the day... but in reality, we still spent the exact same amount of time searching the ship as we would have had we all been on the ship at the same time, so we didn't actually get anything more done in any given day.

It seemed to make the aliens happy, though. Or at least, it made them less insistent that we do more.

But I learned from Tom that the real reason was that the Kymari just didn't trust the Ilrivians with more than two of us on the ship at any one time. Tom and Serena took the first shift, Ivy came up after they finished, I joined in halfway through Ivy's shift, and the final 'tame' dragonet - whose name I still couldn't remember, but was far too embarrassed over forgetting to ask Ivy to remind me of - came up halfway through my shift to take over for Ivy.

The end result was that the patrols became significantly more boring. On our first day I had at least gotten a bit of comfort from hearing four other dragonets gripe and complain about the same frustrations I had, but when there was just two of us there was a lot less in the way of conversation. I think the other dragonets talked with their handler to help pass the time, but I didn't really have that option. Or... I did have the option at this point, I guess, but I didn't want to upset things even more by springing that on Minna.

Or at least, that's what I told myself. The more I thought about it, the more scared I was of what she would think.

The shorter shifts had at least cut down on the headaches significantly. Which I had been extremely grateful for - dealing with the Ilrivian crew was more of a challenge than I had expected. My normal inspections of passenger ships had involved being around a lot of people, but the Kymari were different from the Ilrivians. The Kymari seemed to understand that I was working and that they shouldn't bother me, and so while they were all obviously curious about me, they gave me space and cooperated with anything I tried to do. If I smelled something from beneath a bag somebody moved it, and if I smelled something behind a door somebody opened it.

The Ilrivians, on the other wing, seemed to delight in causing as much trouble for Minna as they could. If something was in the way, they argued with Minna about moving it, no matter how small it was. If a door was closed, they demanded we wait for authorization to open it, even if it was just to something as unimportant as the bathroom. And they were always hovering near us, crowding and looming over me. To their credit, Minna and the Kymari did ask the aliens to give me space... but when they continued to crowd me, the guards began shoving them out of the way.

And instincts that were already on edge from large creatures looming over me weren't exactly calmed by those large creatures pushing and shoving each other.

The other dragonets had similar stories of the ship's crew interfering with them, though they all admitted I had the worst of it. Every time they complained about the crew messing with them, they almost always followed it up with sincere thanks that I was covering the sections with most of the aliens and relief that they didn't have to.

Even our handlers were starting to get short-tempered. Or at least, the Kymari version of it. They were patient and logical creatures even when they were frustrated... but we could tell our handlers were feeling the strain, too. Which only made us more frustrated, which probably only made them more frustrated in response.

The bottom line was that all of us were more than ready to be done with this thing.

And worst of all, none of us had found anything. None of us had found a sicora or even a crawler. We kept smelling faint scents of crawlers, as if they had been around at some point in the past and then magically vanished, but none of us could manage to find where the scents had gone. As best as we could tell the scents always went to a wall and then disappeared.

Other than the ktari 'pets', which we ran into far too often, we had come up empty. The patrols were taking a physical toll on us and up to now it seemed like we hadn't accomplished anything.

And at this rate, we still had weeks to go.

"Time for Trenil and I to go on break. We're heading to the shuttle now. I'll see if he can talk one of the soldiers into blasting the ship while we're there." Ivy tried to keep her tone light, but I could tell she was tired. I sent a mental hug to her across the mindlink. The cargo sections the other dragonets had been inspecting the last few shifts seemed to have a much higher concentration of the chemical scent than earlier areas, and even with the shorter shifts they had all been leaving the freighter with mild headaches.

"Enjoy the rest. Make sure he calls Minna and gives her a heads up if he manages it."

"Worried about getting blown up with it?"

"Not nearly as much as I am about missing the sight of this blasted thing getting blown to bits."

Amusement came back through the mindlink. "I'll make sure they take lots of recordings for us."

Ivy went quiet and I focused on preparing for my own work. The shuttle went through the familiar process of docking with the giant freighter, and once it touched down we disembarked. I rubbed at my nose to try and dig out the far too familiar chemical scent while we waited for a pair of Ilrivians to arrive as our escort. They were late as usual, but once they finally arrived we traveled back to the part of the ship I had ended my shift in yesterday.

I immediately picked up the scent of a ktari once we reached that part of the ship. I narrowed my eyes and took a deeper breath to confirm it, and I couldn't help but hiss in frustration.

There hadn't been any scent of ktari when I had ended my shift the day before. I was certain of that. The Ilrivians must have moved one of the pests into this section once we had left. They didn't have our planned routes in advance, and we were being careful to hop around instead of clearing sections of the ship in any sort of predictable pattern, but they would have been able to figure out we planned to finish out the section we had abandoned at the end of the last shift. We hadn't finished it, so obviously we would have to come back and start there.

If that had happened in one of the cargo sections, there would have been a chance one of the other dragonets would have picked up and taken care of it before the aliens could have added in new delays. But it had to be obvious that I was the only one going through the living areas, so they would have known they had nearly a full day to pile up pointless delays for me.

Now I would have to waste time trying to get access to somebody's private room so I could search it, and I likely would find nothing more than a ktari wasting shia fruit. I couldn't even smell the faded scent of a crawler this time. This was going to be a phenomenal waste of time, and a horrible way to start the day.

Or... would it?

I narrowed my eyes as a thought occurred to me.

It was obvious to everyone that the Ilrivians were messing with us. They were deliberately doing everything they could to keep us confused and unable to find anything. And so far they had done a good job of it.

But their plans had to be based around the assumption that we were simple animals. That we had been trained by the Kymari and were incapable of doing anything outside of that training. That we had no ability to make any decisions on our own, and would waste time on searching out the distractions the Ilrivians had placed in our way.

And as long as we did that, they would be able to keep hiding whatever it was they didn't want us to find. Which I was becoming more and more convinced had to be the crawlers that had left behind those faded scents.

If we were going to get to the bottom of what was happening on this ship, we were going to have to give the Ilrivians some surprises of their own. And with as many as they had given us, they were far more than overdue for one.

Minna finished her final preparations and unwound the slack of the leash from around her arm. I fanned my wings and stared at the two Ilrivians who were with us. I couldn't resist grinning at them.

"Okay Nate. Go seek."

I jumped into the air... and flew calmly down the hallway, completely ignoring the scent of the new ktari. I caught a look of surprise on the faces of the cat-like aliens at my lack of reaction, and I twitched my ear tufts in a sense of triumph. Gotcha.

Time to find out what it is you're trying to keep us from finding...

It took me nearly an hour of searching before I found what I was looking for. The biggest problem actually turned out to be Minna - she had gotten so used to running into repeated delays over the past few days that she began to grow confused and worried when I didn't find anything. She called me back a few times and asked me to check back over corridors after I cleared them, and kept shooting sidelong glances at our escorts.

It was obvious that she suspected they had pulled some new trick to confuse me with. It was also just as obvious that they had no idea what was going on with me either. Their postures became more and more nervous as we went.

In reality I had already picked up at least a dozen different ktari scents. I had just ignored all of them.

I started to ignore the newest ktari scent I had picked up, and continued on down the curving corridor... but the faint, faded scent of a crawler tickled my nose. I reversed my wings and beat them in a rolling downwards motion that pulled me into a hover.

The Kymari and Ilrivians came to a stop around me. Minna's guards all kept their attention on the hallway and doors around us, but I felt the attention of Minna and the two Ilrivians settle on me.

I tried to ignore their attention. Time to think again.

There were five doors in this section of corridor. The scent of the ktari was obvious and I could tell exactly what door it was coming from. And the faded smell of the crawler seemed to be coming from that door, too.

The ktari were a distraction. I was completely certain of that much. The aliens wanted me to chase after them, to go to that room and waste as much of the short time that I had in searching for it. Probably so that more of the chemical toxins could build up in my system, and make me less effective at spotting whatever they were trying to hide. The scent clearly led to that door, which meant the Ilrivians wanted me to go through that door... so that was just as clearly the one door I did not want to go through.

I flew carefully through the hallway and tried to get an idea of what was behind the other doors. I could feel the Ilrivians eyes glued to me with every wingbeat. They were much more nervous than they had been all the other times. That meant I had to be on the right track.

Didn't it?

After three loops of the hallway I hissed in frustration. Nothing stood out. I could pick out faint scents of foods, the typical odor that hung around the Ilrivians, and several other scents that I had grown used to on this ship. Including that horrid chemical scent. My nose wasn't going to give me any more clues than it already had.

I hovered in the air again and stared at the doors. The door with the ktari was on one side, with another door further down the hallway from it. The opposite side of the hallway held the other three doors. All five doors looked perfectly normal. There weren't any special markings on them or on the controls on the walls next to them. Nothing else marked the walls or ceiling. Nothing else was unusual about this.

Could the position of the doors mean something? It wasn't that odd to have them spaced out like this, was it? I had seen this type of arrangement in lots of the corridors already. The two rooms would have to be bigger than the three rooms on the other side, but... was there any reason for that to be odd? It would make sense that certain members of the crew would be given more personal space - senior crew, crew who had certain duties that required more equipment, that sort of thing. So it wasn't that odd that the room with the ktari and the room right next to it were larger than the other rooms on this hallway.

But I didn't really have anything else to go on.

"He's acting strange. Kilpin, can you make a note of where we are?" Minna kept her eyes on me as she spoke, and carefully walked closer to me. "What is it, Nate?"

I hovered in the air for another moment. All I had to go on was the scent of the ktari. And I knew that was a misdirect. Even if I didn't know what it was misdirecting me from, or where that thing was actually at.

I looked at the door that led to the ktari... then flew past it and landed before the door to the room next to it. I hissed loudly and scratched at the door. After a few seconds of scratching I glanced back at Minna - and at the two Ilrivians behind her - then scratched at the door again.

I caught it when the two Ilrivians exchanged a wary look. They were nervous. Or at the very least, confused.

"Nate, come back." I flew back to Minna's shoulder and glared at the two cat-like aliens as Minna turned back to them. "We need to get into this room."

They hesitated. I felt a sense of hopefulness - they weren't expecting us to go into that room. I wasn't sure if that meant I had guessed correctly and was on the trail of something... but at least I was catching them by surprise. If nothing else, that meant they wouldn't have any tricks waiting inside to mess with me.

"Of course. We'll just get the crewman assigned to these quarters." One of them turned away from us and began talking into the device at his wrist. The other one watched us - or more specifically, me - for another moment... then he turned away, too.

I felt a subtle shift in Minna's stance once the Ilrivians turned away. It took me a second to realize what had changed, and I felt an odd sense of pride when I recognized it. Minna had shifted into a stance closer to the one she used at the gym, when she was preparing to spar or work out. She was more alert now, more prepared.

She had picked up on changes in the Ilrivians' behavior and knew something was up.

I looked carefully around the hallway and noticed the other Kymari were also displaying signs of alertness. They didn't know what was going on, but they knew something was wrong, and they were trying to be prepared for anything.

I tried to keep my attention focused on the corridor around me. I knew my reactions weren't as quick as that of the battle trained Kymari, but that was no reason to slack off. I sat up on Minna's shoulder and settled in to wait for the room to be opened.