THEY WERE WAITING as I stepped through the door into the taverno: three ofthem, preadult Yavanni, roughly the size of Brahma bulls, looming over me from bothsides of the entryway. Big, eager-eyed, and territorial, they were on theprowland looking for an excuse to squash something soft.

From all indications, it looked like that something was going to be me.

I stopped short just inside the door, and as it swung closed against my back Icaught a faint whiff of turpentine from the direction of my would-beassailants.

Which meant that along with being young and brash, they were also tanked tothe briskets. I was still outside the invisible boundary of the personalterritories they'd staked out for themselves in the entryway; and if I had any brains, I'dkeep it that way. Yavanni aren't very bright even at the best of times, butwhen you're outweighed by two to one and outnumbered by three to one, brainpowerratio isn't likely to be the deciding factor. It had been a long day and alonger evening, I was tired and cranky, and the smartest thing I could dorightnow was get hold of the doorknob digging into my back and get out of there.

I looked past the Yavanni into the main part of the taverno. The place waspretty crowded, with both humans and a representative distribution of otherspecies sitting around the fashionably darkened interior. It was likely tostaywell populated, too, at least as long as anyone who tried to leave had to passthe three mobile mountains waiting at the door. A fair percentage of theclientele, I could see, was surreptitiously watching the little drama about tounfold, while the rest were studiously ignoring it. None of either grouplooked eager to leap to my defense should that become necessary. The two bartenderswere watching me more openly, but there would be no help from that direction, either. This section of the spaceport environs lay in Meima's Vyssiluyanenclave, and the Vyssiluyas were notoriously laissez-faire where disputes ofthis sort were concerned. The local police would gladly and industriously pickup the pieces after it was all over, but that wasn't going to be much comfortif I wound up being one of those pieces.