Warhorse (35 page)

A brief glint of sunlight caught his eye. A ship, running in geosynchronous orbit, all the way around the planet from where the human and Tampy colonies were located.

Grinning tightly, Ferrol set the comm laser to track and keyed an intercept course into the helm. “Wwis-khaa, shift direction onto the vector indicated,” he ordered. The laser signaled ready—“
Scapa Flow
, this is Chayne Ferrol,” he called. “Identification: beta hopscotch. Come in.” He held his breath—

“
Scapa Flow
here,” Malraux Demarco's voice came. It sounded relieved. “Long time no hear, Chayne.”

“Much too long,” Ferrol agreed. “What's ship status?”

“Oh, pretty much ready to go whenever you are,” the other replied. “You, uh, bringing us a gift there?”

“On loan only,” Ferrol told him. “Listen closely, now. Our ETA is—” he scanned the helm display for the numbers—“about forty-five minutes. I want the cargo bay cleared—and I mean
cleared
—and one lifeboat prepped and stocked for a flight planetside. Also, dig a pair of mid-length rein lines out of storage—four hundred meters ought to do it—and get them attached to the forward grapple. Attached
good
.”

There was a short pause. “Sounds like we're not going to be going hunting, after all,” Demarco said.

“Oh, we're going hunting, all right,” Ferrol told him grimly. “Count on that. Now. Here's the plan: we're going to put the lander here into the cargo bay, with the rein lines hanging out the main hatchway. We'll pack the gap to make the bay airtight; but since any real tug on the lines would tear out the sealant, we'll run your set of reins between our space horse and the forward grapple to do the actual pulling, leaving the one from the lander slack. Clear?”

“Except for whether or not that lander will actually fit in our cargo bay,” Demarco said. “Our rangefinder readout on you makes it pretty damn close.”

“It's close, but it'll work,” Ferrol assured him. “I've run the numbers twice, and it
can
be done.”

“Well…if you say so,” Demarco said, still sounding unconvinced.

“Trust me,” Ferrol said. “Anyway, that's my problem. You just concentrate on making sure I've got room to get the thing in. That, and getting the rein lines hooked up. Oh, and you'd better run a cable from the bay intercom box so that we can link up to the lander's outside comm port.” A stab of momentary guilt twinged at him; but without enough filter masks for the
Scapa Flow
's entire crew, they really had no choice but to confine the Tampies to the lander and cargo bay.

“Got it. I presume we're rather in a hurry?”

Ferrol threw a sideways glance at Yamoto's profile. “There's enough time to do the job right,” he told Demarco. “That doesn't mean you should stop for coffee, though.”

“Right. We'll be ready when you get here.”

“Good. Ferrol out.”

He keyed off the laser and set the scanners for a full radar and beacon search. Unlikely there would be any other ships in the vicinity, but there wasn't any point in taking chances.

“You going to do the docking yourself?” Yamoto asked.

Ferrol nodded. “I'd planned to, yes. Why?”

“Because I don't think you can do it,” she said bluntly. “Not without wrecking either the lander or your cargo bay or both.”

Ferrol had wondered about that himself. “I'll take it real slow,” he told her. “Or else have the
Scapa Flow
's chief helmer come out and take us in.”

“With the
Amity
breathing down your neck?” she asked pointedly.

“Who said the
Amity
was breathing down my neck?” Ferrol countered.

She turned contemptuous eyes on him. “Oh, come on, Ferrol, let's cut through the snow,” she said. “Whatever you're doing here, you're doing it on your own, without a scrap of authorization from anyone. We both know it; and we both know that if you take the time to EVA a helmer out here, you'll be crowding your timetable so much he's likely to rush the job.”

“I can't let you do the docking,” Ferrol told her quietly. “So far everything you've done comes under the heading of innocently obeying orders from a superior officer. I don't want you in any deeper than that.”

“Your concern is touching,” Yamoto growled. “But soothe your conscience—I'm not doing it for you.” She jerked her head back toward the Tampies. “You've got three innocents at risk here—four, if you count me. I'm doing the docking, and that's final.”

Behind the filter mask, Ferrol grimaced, glad the expression wasn't visible. Of course; it had to have been something like that. Not simply that she was willing to trust him or his judgment.

But then, no one seemed willing to trust his judgment these days. Why should Yamoto be different?

“In that case,” he told her, “I accept.”

“Sure as hell taking her time pulling away,” Demarco growled, gazing at his displays. “You know, I don't think she's planning to head planetside at all.”

Ferrol glanced at the screen. Demarco was right: Yamoto was just letting her lifeboat drift. “Probably decided she'd do as well to wait for the
Amity
to show up,” he told Demarco. “Probably also figures that if she can record our Jump direction it'll give them a shot at tracking us down.”

Demarco sent him a frown. “They can't do that, can they?”

“Don't worry about it,” Ferrol advised him. “With the route we'll be taking they won't have a hope in hell of following us.”

On his console the intercom pinged. “Chayne, we've got the intercom connection to the lander now,” someone reported.

“Thank you.” Ferrol keyed the proper switch. “Wwis-khaa? This is Commander Ferrol. Are you and the others doing all right?”

“We are well, Ffe-rho.”

With Ferrol and Yamoto gone from the lander, the three aliens had removed their filter masks; briefly, Ferrol wished he was better at reading Tampy expressions. “I'm sorry we have to keep you back there in the lander,” he apologized. “But without enough filter masks to go around we really can't let you into the main part of the ship.”

“No scitte,” Demarco muttered under his breath. “It'd take months to scrub the stench out of the air system.”

Ferrol threw him a glare. “You should have received the next target star on your display by now,” he continued to Wwis-khaa. “Can Epilog see it all right?”

“He can.” Wwis-khaa paused. “Ffe-rho, I would like to know what it is you are asking us to do.”

“A fair question,” Ferrol agreed. “Very simply, I'm asking you to help your people. Your people, and your space horses. Have you ever heard of an Earth creature called the
dog
?”

“A domesticated carnivore of the
Canis
group,” Wwis-khaa said promptly. “Its ecological position is usually as a companion or pet to humans.”

“Right,” Ferrol nodded, vaguely impressed that the alien would know that. “They're mostly pets now, but originally they were used by herders and shepherds to help guard food animals from dangerous predators. Still are, in some places.”

He'd expected Wwis-khaa to catch his drift; and he wasn't disappointed. “You seek to find such creatures in space?” the Tampy asked, his head tilting to one side in a gesture Ferrol had never seen before. “Small predators to protect our space horses from sharks?”

“That's it,” Ferrol nodded. “Granted, we don't know if such things even exist; but now that we know there are at least three species of space-going creatures, it seems reasonable that there should be others. True?”

“I do not know,” Wwis-khaa said. “How do you presume to search for such creatures throughout the vastness of space?”

“I don't,” Ferrol said. “We're going to leave space and normal star systems alone and concentrate instead on a much more select group of places: namely, the accretion disks around large black holes.”

Demarco twisted his head around, a stunned look on his face. “I think it makes sense,” Ferrol continued, ignoring the other. “That's where space horses are supposed to have originated; and if so, there must be some remnant of the ecology left. You game to take a look?”

For a long moment Wwis-khaa was silent. Ferrol held his breath, fully and painfully aware that if the Tampies refused the whole thing would die right here and now. “Your wishes are ours,” the alien said. “When do you wish to leave?”

Quietly, Ferrol exhaled. “As soon as Epilog is in position,” he told the other. “Let the helmer—Randall—know when you're ready.”

“Your wishes are ours,” Wwis-khaa repeated.

Feeling a little limp, Ferrol switched off the intercom. It had worked…and they were on their way. He looked up—

To find Demarco gazing hard at him. “I trust,” the other said carefully, “that all of that was just so much spun sugar.”

“Some of it was,” Ferrol said. “Most of it wasn't. We
are
going to poke around a few black holes, and we
are
hunting for a scaled-down version of a shark. But not for the reason I gave Wwis-khaa—that was just to get his cooperation.”

“You should have just told melt-face it was an order, and that you were his superior officer, and that was that,” Demarco sniffed. “That's all the explanation the stupid plant-lovers deserve.”

Ferrol frowned at the other, a strange feeling curling through his stomach. Somehow, he didn't remember Demarco as being quite this crude. “If I'm right,” he said quietly, “we've probably got a good chance of running into some sharks along the way. Wwis-khaa and the others deserve to know what they're letting themselves in for.”

Demarco raised his eyebrows. “I see some of the
Amity
's heart-bleeding has rubbed off on you. Sir. So if we're not recruiting watchdogs for the melt-faces, what the hell
do
we want these miniature sharks for?”

“We want them for transport, of course,” Ferrol growled. Demarco was teetering right on the edge of insubordination here. “We've been in a long, dead-end track here, trying to capture and train space horses. Human beings are predators, and the space horses can't or won't stand for that. But a space-going predator species might. Clear now?”

Demarco snorted. “If you say so. Sounds like the sort of wishy-wok stuff your melt-faced chummies would spout, though. If you ask me.”

Quite suddenly, Ferrol decided he was tired of Demarco. “All right then; try this,” he said coldly. “We're going because I've given you an order, and I'm your captain, and that's that.”

Demarco's lip twisted, but he nodded. “Yes,
sir
,” he muttered, and turned back to his console.

“Chayne?” Randall spoke up tentatively. “Your melt-fa—your Tampy signals he's ready to go.”

Ferrol took a deep breath, fighting for calm. “Tell him to go ahead and Jump,” he ordered.

And wondered what had happened to his crew in the past year, to make them so harshly bigoted.

“A
RACHNE'S DIRECTOR SAID THEY'D
alerted Earth and Prepyat via tachyon,” Yamoto's voice came over the comm laser. She sounded tired, and about as emotionally drained as Roman felt. Not really surprising, under the circumstances. “I guess the message didn't get through.”

“It got through, all right,” Roman told her. “Just not soon enough.”

Yamoto sighed. “My fault, Captain. I should have alerted the colony as soon as we arrived in the system, and the hell with any consequences.”

Roman shook his head. “It wouldn't have helped. Once we'd Jumped to Sirius and then back to Solomon system, we were already out of position to hit anywhere near Arachne itself. We couldn't have gotten here in time to stop Ferrol no matter when you blew the whistle. It wasn't in any way your fault.”

“Yes, sir.” She didn't sound like she believed it. “I'm ready to boost orbit whenever you're ready.”

Roman gave his helm display a quick scan. After four hours of a hard three-gee acceleration/deceleration drive through Arachne system from their arrival Jump point,
Amity
had finally reached the planet itself. The tactical showed their course swinging close in to cut across Yamoto's own geosynchronous orbit… “You might as well just sit tight there,” he decided. “It'll probably be faster for us to catch up than for you to fiddle with your orbit.” Though what the hurry was for, Roman really couldn't say—by Yamoto's numbers, Ferrol and the
Scapa Flow
were a good six hours ahead of them already, and
Amity
's chances of tracking them down at this point were just fractionally above absolute zero. “We'll be alongside in about ten minutes.”

“Yes, sir.”

At the helm, Kennedy half turned. “Captain? I've got a probable vector for them now, if you'd like to take a look.”

“Thank you.” For a minute Roman studied the tactical and visual maps she'd produced. In the direction indicated—

Was, basically, nothing. “How probable
is
this?” he asked.

“Only about seventy-five percent, actually,” she admitted. “The tapes Yamoto made of Epilog's Jump are good and sharp, but you can only be so accurate from half a kilometer away. Computer gives a ninety-nine percent probability for this area”—a small circle appeared on the visual, centered around the original vector—“but there are at least fifteen stars in there that ought to be visible to a space horse.”

“Even one as young as Epilog?” Roman asked.

Kennedy shook her head. “I don't know. Neither do the Tampies; I asked them.”

And of course they wouldn't do anything so vulgar as to speculate…Roman clenched his teeth, fighting down a sudden surge of anger at the aliens. This wasn't their fault, either. “Get me everything we have on those stars,” he directed Kennedy. “Let's see if we can figure out what Ferrol's up to.”