Hours later, Severance lay awake in his sleeper, aware of the tension in the woman lying next to him. Her body was insulated from his by the plastic fabric of the sleepers, but Cidra was lying so still, she was clearly wide-awake.

He had said nothing when she had crawled into the sleeper wearing her clothing. She clearly had not felt comfortable in the trousers and shirt all day, so he had resisted the urge to tell her what a sweet, sassy little rear she had. Harmonic males undoubtedly did not say things like that to their women. Harmonic males didn’t even think in terms of “their women.”

But Wolves did think in such primitive terms, Severance was discovering. Like it or not, he was starting to think of Cidra that way. “Company property” he had called her, but she hadn’t seemed to realize just what he was saying. His feelings of possessiveness were stronger than ever, yet he hadn’t even had her in his bed. He wondered how he would ever get as far as QED without trying to seduce her. The only option he had—terminating her crew contract—was not one he wanted to consider. She would fall into the path of some piece of second-class mail like Racer.

Severance turned onto his side, watching Cidra’s too-tense outline. The movement made him aware of the second pulser he had stowed under his sleeper. The Screamer was in the utility loop that hung within reach, and he could put out his hand and touch the first pulser, the one he had worn strapped to his thigh during the day. He’d had the second one in his travel pack and, as a general precaution, had decided to sleep on top of it. Renaissance was a dangerous planet, and not all the hazards were from its natural flora and fauna. Some of them were man-made.

Seeing Racer two nights ago had made Severance remember just how dangerous the human species could be. A part of him still burned with a frozen flame of anger as he recalled the emotion that had shot through him when he’d entered the Bloodsucker and seen Racer sitting with Cidra. There was no way he could have left Cidra behind on this trip. She might have been reasonably safe from the perils of Port Try Again, but she wouldn’t have been safe from Racer. Every gut-level instinct had warned Severance that Racer would have found a way to use Cidra.

“Severance?”

The quiet whisper of her voice made him jump. “What is it, Cidra?”

“Are you awake?”

“No, I’m just making conversation in my sleep.” He smiled to himself as she wriggled around in the sleeper to face him.

“Do you hear those weird clanking sounds?”

He could barely see her face in the shadows, but he sensed the genuine tension in her voice. “I hear them. Probably zalons. They’ve got shells as hard as armor. And they like to fight a lot. Sometimes you can hear the clanking for several kilometers. They’re huge, but they eat only plants.”

“Why do they fight?”

“Male zalons fight over female zalons. Mating rituals. They mate frequently.”

“Everything on Lovelady and Renaissance seems to mate frequently,” she said, almost to herself. “Desma told me she has four children.”

“That’s a small family by Wolf standards. Last I heard, the average number of children was over five per family.”

“I can’t even imagine having brothers and sisters. When I was growing up, there were hardly any other children in Clementia.”

Her voice trailed off but not before Severance picked up the unspoken inference. He knew without being told that those other children hadn’t provided much in the way of companionship for the little Wolf born among Harmonics.

“My family was smaller than average too. I only had one brother,” he heard himself say.

“The one who was a Harmonic?”

“Yes.” He was quiet for a while. “Jeude was a late bloomer in a sense. We didn’t realize he was a Harmonic until he was in his late teens. Just thought he was a little different—quiet and thoughtful. A bit eccentric in some ways. My parents had just begun to acknowledge that he might be Harmonic when they were killed.”

“Oh, Severance,” she said gently, “what happened?”

“They were geologists with a big mining company on QED. There was an accident. An explosion.” He sensed her movement, and the next thing he knew, she was stretching out her hand to touch his. “Jeude took it hard. Very hard. And he refused to be separated from me after that. He wouldn’t hear of being sent to Clementia.”

“So you let him run mail with you?”

“He was good at it. Very determined. Once in a while I let him take a ship out alone while I made deliveries and arranged contracts here on Renaissance or on Lovelady. He liked going to QED by himself with just Fred along for company. Said it gave him a lot of time to think. I knew I should have insisted he go to Clementia for training, but he kept resisting the idea and I just didn’t have the heart to force him. He got killed because of my lousy judgment.”

“Was he killed on that red plain? The one you light-painted on board ship?”

She might not be a Harmonic, but there were times when the lady was too damn intuitive. “He went straight into the ground answering a distress signal in a QED sandstorm. Nothing that flies can survive one of those storms. The only thing a pilot can do is run from them. But Jeude didn’t run.” Severance felt his hand clench into a fist under the sleeper cover. Very deliberately he forced himself to flatten out his palm. “Fred survived. The rescue crew found him wrapped around Jeude’s leg when they arrived. The ship was destroyed, pieces of it scattered over a wide area. They never did find all the cargo.”

“I’m so sorry, Severance.”

“I know.” He didn’t doubt it for a moment. Cidra’s compassion was as real as her ability with Moonlight and Mirrors. Sweetness and light were her inner core of strength. He shook off the brooding feeling as he thought about the conflicting image. “It’s in the past, Cidra. I wish I hadn’t mentioned it.” Severance rubbed his eyes wearily, thinking that he hadn’t talked about Jeude to anyone for a long time.

She didn’t press him. Her hand slipped back into her sleeper, and she turned on her back to stare at the low ceiling of the tent. Another distant clanking sound echoed in the night, and a small scream split the air close to the camp.

“Overcash is right. Renaissance is somewhat overwhelming,” Cidra said quietly.

 “Frightened?”

“No, of course not. I understand about the security systems and the deflectors and all. There’s nothing to worry about.”