Homeward Bound (3 page)

“If the Big Uglies’ methods fail, you could give up your entire remaining span of days,” Ttomalss pointed out. “Have you considered that?”

Now Kassquit used the affirmative gesture. “I have indeed,” she answered. “First, the risk is in my opinion worth it. Second, even if I should die, what better way to do so than completely unconscious and unaware? From all I gather, dying is no more pleasant for Tosevites than for members of the Race.”

“Truth. At any rate, I believe it to be truth,” Ttomalss said. “But you have not considered one other possibility. Suppose you are revived, but find yourself . . . diminished upon awakening? This too can happen.”

He was right. Kassquit hadn’t thought about that. She prided herself on her fierce, prickly intelligence. How would she, how could she, cope with the new world of Home if she did not have every bit of that? “I am willing to take the chance,” she declared.

“Whether we are willing for you to take it may be another question,” Ttomalss said.

“Oh, yes. I know.” Kassquit did not bother to hide her bitterness. By the way Ttomalss’ eye turrets twitched uncomfortably, he understood what she felt. She went on, “Even so, I am going to try. And you are going to do everything you can to support me.” She used an emphatic cough to stress her words.

The male who’d raised her jerked in surprise. “I am? Why do you say that?”

“Why? Because you owe it to me,” Kassquit answered fiercely. “You have made me into something neither scale nor bone. You treated me as an experimental animal—an interesting experimental animal, but an experimental animal even so—for all the first half of my life. Thanks to you, I think of myself at least as much as a female of the Race as I do of myself as a Tosevite.”

“You
are
a citizen of the Empire,” Ttomalss said. “Does that not please you?”

“By the Emperor, it does,” Kassquit said, and used another emphatic cough. Ttomalss automatically cast his eye turrets down toward the metal floor at the mention of the sovereign. Kassquit had to move her whole head to make the ritual gesture of respect. She did it. She’d been trained to do it. As she usually wasn’t, she was consciously aware she’d been trained to do it. She continued, “It pleases me so much, I want to see the real Empire of which I am supposed to be a part. And there is one other thing you do not seem to have considered.”

“What is that?” Ttomalss asked cautiously—or perhaps
fearfully
was the better word.

“If the Big Uglies are working on cold sleep, what are they likely to do with it?” Kassquit asked. Her facial features stayed immobile. She had never learned the expressions most Big Uglies used to show emotion. Those cues required echoes during early hatchlinghood, echoes Ttomalss had been unable to give her. If she could have, though, she would have smiled a nasty smile. “What else but try to fly from star to star? If they reach Home, would it not be well to have someone there with at least some understanding and firsthand experience of them?”

She waited. Ttomalss made small, unhappy hissing noises. “I
had
not considered that,” he admitted at last. “I do not believe anyone on Tosev 3 has considered it—not in that context, at any rate. You may well be right. If the Big Uglies do reach Home, we would be better off having individuals there who are familiar with them from something other than data transmissions across light-years of space. The males and females back on Home at present plainly do not qualify.”

“Then you agree to support my petition to travel to Home?” Kassquit asked, eagerness in her voice if not on her face.

“If—I repeat,
if
—the Big Uglies’ techniques for cold sleep prove both effective and safe, then perhaps this may be a justifiable risk.” Ttomalss did not sound as if he wanted to commit himself to anything.

Kassquit knew she had to pin him down if she possibly could. “You will support my petition?” she asked again, more sharply this time. “Please come straight out and tell me what you will do, superior sir.”

That was plainly the last thing Ttomalss wanted to do. At last, with obvious reluctance, he made the affirmative gesture. “Very well. I will do this. But you must see that I do it much more for the sake of the Race and for Home than for your personal, petty—I might even say selfish—reasons.”

“Of course, superior sir.” Kassquit didn’t care why Ttomalss was doing as she wanted. She only cared that he was doing it. “Whatever your reasons, I thank you.”

“Make your petition. It will have my full endorsement,” Ttomalss said. “Is there anything else?”

“No, superior sir.” Kassquit knew a dismissal when she heard one. She hurried out of Ttomalss’ office. Inside, her liver was singing. The Big Uglies spoke of the heart as the center of emotion, but she was too much under the influence of the Race’s language—the only one she spoke—to worry about that foolish conceit.

Even after she submitted her petition, wheels turned slowly. More than a year of the Race went by before it was finally approved. She watched Tosev 3 from orbit. She had never visited the planet on which she’d been hatched. She did not think she ever would. Because she’d been exposed to so few Tosevite illnesses when young, her body had inadequate defenses against them. What would have been a trivial illness or no illness at all for the average wild Big Ugly might have killed her.

Another snag developed when the American Big Uglies proved reluctant to send a physician up to her starship to give her the treatment she needed. At last, though, they were persuaded. Kassquit didn’t know what went into the process of persuasion, but it finally worked.

“So you will be going to Home, will you?” the Tosevite asked. Even in the warmth of the starship—the Race naturally heated the interior to their standards of comfort, which were hotter than most Tosevites cared for—he wore white cloth wrappings. He also wore a cloth mask, to keep from infecting her with microorganisms. He spoke the language of the Race reasonably well. These days, most educated Tosevites did.

“I hope so, yes,” she answered.

“All right.” He bobbed his head up and down, the Big Uglies’ equivalent of the affirmative gesture. “Our treatment is based on the one the Race uses. I will leave detailed instructions with the Race on how to care for you, what injections to give you when you are revived, the proper temperature at which to store you, and so on. And I will wish you luck. I hope this works. We are still learning, you know.”

“Yes, I understand that,” Kassquit said. “To see Home, I would take almost any risk. I am not afraid. Do what you need to do.” She lay down on the sleeping mat.

The Race gave injections with a high-pressure spray that painlessly penetrated scaly hides. Big Uglies used hollow needles. They stung. Kassquit started to tell the physician as much, but the world around her slowed down and it no longer seemed important. The fluorescent lights overhead blurred and then went dark.

Glen Johnson and Mickey Flynn floated in the
Lewis and Clark
’s control room. The glass in the broad view windows had been treated to kill reflections, leaving them with a splendid view of the local asteroids—quite a few of which now sported American installations, or at least motors adequate to swing them out of orbit—and of far more stars than they would have seen from beneath Earth’s thick mantle of air. The sky was black—not just blue-black, but sable absolute.

“We’ve spent a hell of a lot of time out here,” Johnson remarked, apropos of nothing in particular. He was a lean man of not quite sixty; because he’d spent the past twenty years weightless, his skin hadn’t wrinkled and sagged the way it would have in a gravity field. Of course, everything came at a price. If he had to endure much in the way of gravity now, it would kill him in short order.

“We volunteered,” Flynn replied. He’d been round under gravity; he was rounder now, but he also did not sag so much. With dignity, he corrected himself: “I volunteered, anyhow. You stowed away.”

“I was shanghaied.” Johnson had been saying that ever since he boarded the
Lewis and Clark.
The ship had still been in Earth orbit then, and he’d faked a malfunction in his orbital patrol craft to give himself a plausible excuse for finding out what was going on with it. The only trouble was, the commandant had thought he was a spy, had kept him aboard to make sure he couldn’t possibly report to anyone, and hadn’t trusted him from that day to this.

Flynn sent him a bland, Buddhalike stare—except the Buddha had surely had a lot less original sin dancing in his eyes than Mickey Flynn did. “And what would you have done if you hadn’t been?” he inquired. “Something honest, perhaps? Give me leave to doubt.”

Before Johnson could muster the high dudgeon such a remark demanded, the intercom in the ceiling blared out, “Colonel Johnson, report to the commandant’s office immediately! Colonel Glen Johnson, report to the commandant’s office immediately!”

“There, you see?” Flynn said. “He’s finally caught you with your hand in the cookie jar. Out the air lock you go, without benefit of spacesuit or scooter. It’s been nice knowing you. Can I have that pint of bourbon you’ve got stashed away?”

“Ha! Don’t I wish!” Johnson exclaimed. Ships from Earth were few and far between. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d tasted whiskey. Every so often, someone did cook up some unofficial alcohol—highly against regulations—aboard the
Lewis and Clark.
It was good, but it wasn’t the same.

“Colonel Johnson, report to Lieutenant General Healey’s office immediately!” The intercom wasn’t going to let up. “Colonel Glen Johnson, report to Lieutenant General Healey’s office immediately!”

“Well, I’m off,” Johnson said resignedly.

“I knew that,” Flynn replied, imperturbable as usual.

With a snort, Johnson glided out of the control room and toward the commandant’s lair near the heart of the ship. The corridors had handholds to let crewfolk brachiate along them. The
Lewis and Clark
had never carried bananas, which struck Johnson as a shame. Mirrors where corridors intersected helped stop collisions, a good thing—you could swing along at quite a clip, fast enough to make running into somebody else also going at top speed no joke at all.

“Colonel Johnson, report to . . .” The intercom kept right on bellowing till Johnson zoomed into the commandant’s office. He’d slowed down by then, enough so that he didn’t sprain his wrists when he stopped by grabbing the far edge of Lieutenant General Healey’s desk.

He saluted. The commandant remained a stickler for military courtesy out here in space, where it didn’t matter a dime’s worth to anybody else. “Reporting as ordered, sir,” Johnson said sweetly.

“Yes.” Lieutenant General Charles Healey returned the salute. Johnson hadn’t liked him at first sight, and familiarity hadn’t made the commandant any more lovable. Healey had a face only a snapping turtle could love: round, pugnacious, and wattled. He had a snapping turtle’s attitude, too. He bit often, he bit hard, and he didn’t like to let go. Glaring at Johnson, he demanded, “When an American starship flies, how would you like to be one of the pilots aboard her?”

Johnson stared back. Healey wasn’t joking. He never joked. As far as Johnson could tell, he’d had his sense of humor surgically removed at birth, and the operation had been a smashing success. Logically, that meant he wasn’t joking now. Considering all the trouble he and Johnson had had, the pilot still had trouble believing his ears. “My God, sir,” he blurted, “who do I have to kill to get the job?”

“Yourself,” Healey answered, still in the hard, flat, take-it-or-leave-it voice he usually used. By all the signs, he wasn’t kidding about that, either.

“Sir?” That was as much of a question as Johnson was going to ask, no matter how badly he wanted to know more.

“Yourself—maybe.” Healey sounded as if he didn’t want to unbend even that much. More grudgingly still, he explained, “Cold sleep. If you’re not going to be too old by the time the ship finally flies, you’d better go under now. It’s still a new technique—nobody’s
quite
sure you’ll wake up by the time you get to where you’re needed.” He spoke with a certain somber relish.

“Why me, sir?” Johnson asked. “Why not Flynn or Stone? They’re both senior to me.” Nobody had intended the
Lewis and Clark
to have three pilots. If he hadn’t involuntarily joined the crew, the ship wouldn’t have.

“This would be in addition to them, not instead of,” Healey said. “Two reasons for having you along at all. First one is, you’re the best at fine maneuvering we’ve got. All that time in orbital missions and trundling back and forth on the scooter means you have to be. Do you say otherwise?” He scowled a challenge.

“No, sir.” Johnson didn’t point out that piloting a starship was different from anything he’d done before. Piloting a starship was different from anything anybody had done before.

Healey went on, “Second reason is, you’ll be on ice and out of everybody’s hair from the time you go under till you wake up again—if you wake up again. And then you’ll be a good many light-years from home—too many for even you to get yourself into much trouble.” The scowl got deeper. “I hope.”

“Sir, the only place I’ve ever made trouble is inside your mind.” Johnson had been insisting on that ever since he came aboard the
Lewis and Clark.
While it wasn’t strictly true, it was his ticket to keep on breathing.

By the way Lieutenant General Healey eyed him, he wondered how much that ticket was worth. “You are a lying son of a bitch,” Healey said crisply. “Do you think I believe your capsule had a genuine electrical failure? Do you think I don’t know you were talking with Sam Yeager before you poked your snoot into our business here?”

Ice that had nothing to do with cold sleep walked up Johnson’s back. “Why shouldn’t I have talked with him?” he asked, since denying it was plainly pointless. “He’s only the best expert on the Lizards we’ve got. When I was doing orbital patrol, I needed that kind of information.”

“He was such an expert on the goddamn Lizards, he turned Judas for them,” Healey said savagely. “For all I know, you would have done the same. Indianapolis’ blood is on his hands.”