The nearest kzin stood up.

Rich orange fur, with black markings over the eyes, covered what might have been a very fat tabby cat eight feet tall. The fat was muscle, smooth and powerful and oddly arranged over an equally odd skeleton. On hands like black leather gloves, sharpened and polished claws slid out of their sheaths.

A quarter of a ton of sentient carnivore stooped over the puppeteer and said, "Tell me now, why do you think that you can insult the Patriarch of Kzin and live?"

The puppeteer answered immediately, and without a tremor in its voice. "It was I who, on a world which circles Beta Lyrae, kicked a kzin called Chuft-Captain in the belly with my hind hoof, breaking three struts of his endoskeletal structure. I have need of a kzin of courage."

"Continue," said the kzin of the black eyes. Despite limitations imposed by the structure of his mouth, the kzin's Interworld was excellent. But his voice showed no sign of the rage he must have felt. For all the emotion shown by kzinti or puppeteer, Louis might have been watching some time-dulled ritual.

But the meat set before the kzinti was blood-raw and steaming; it had been flash-heated to body temperature just before serving. And all of the kzinti were smiling.

"This human and I," said the puppeteer, "will explore a place such as no kzin has ever dreamed. We will need a kzin in our crew. Dare a kzin follow where a puppeteer leads?"

"It has been said that puppeteers were plant-eaters, that they would lead away from battle and not toward it."

"You shall judge. Your fee, if you survive, will be the plans for a new and valuable type of spacecraft, plus a model of the ship itself. You may consider this fee to be extreme hazard pay."