Startide Rising (26 page)

Tom must have found his island crucible by now, she thought, and begun preparing his experiment.

If he still lived.

This morning, for the first time, she felt uncertain about that. She had been so sure she would know it, if he died, wherever or whenever it happened. Yet now she felt confused. Her mind was muddied, and all she could tell for certain was that terrible things had happened last night.

First, around sunset, had come a crawling premonition that something had happened to Tom. She couldn’t pin the feeling down, but it disturbed her.

Then, late last night, she had had a series of dreams.

There had been faces. Galactic faces, leathern and feathered and scaled, toothed and mandibled. They yammered and howled, but she, in spite of all her expensive training, couldn’t understand a single word or sense-glyph. A few of the jumbled faces she had recognized in her sleep—a pair of Xappish spacemen, dying as their ship was torn apart—a Jophur, howling through smoke at the bleeding stump of its arm—a Synthian, listening to whale songs while she waited impatiently behind a vacuum-cold lump of stone.

In her sleep Gillian had been helpless to keep them out.

She had awakened suddenly, in the middle of the night, to a tremor that plucked her spine like a bowstring. Breathing heavily in the darkness, she sensed a kindred consciousness writhe in agony at the limit of her range. In spite of the distance, Gillian caught a mixed flavor in the fleeting psychic glyph. It felt too human to have been only a fin, too cetacean to have been merely a man.

Then it ceased. The psychic onslaught was over.

She didn’t know what to make of any of it. What use was psi, if its messages were too opaque to be deciphered? Her genetically enhanced intuition now seemed a cruel deception. Worse than useless.

She had a few moments left to her hour. She spent them with her eyes closed, listening to the rise and fall of sound, as the breakers fought their endless battle with the western shoreline. Tree limbs brushed and swayed with the wind.

Interleaved with the creakings of trunk and branch, Gillian could hear the high chittering squeaks of the aboriginal pre-sentients—the Kiqui. From time to time, she made out the voice of Dennie Sudman, speaking into a machine that translated her words into the high-frequency Kiqui dialect.

Though she was working twelve hours a day, helping Dennie with the Kiqui, Gillian couldn’t help feeling guiltily that she was taking a vacation. She reminded herself that the little natives were extremely important, and that she had just been spinning her wheels back at the ship.

But one of the faces from her dream had stuck with her all morning. Only a half-hour ago she had realized that it was her own subconscious rendering of what Herbie, the ancient cadaver which had caused all this trouble, must have looked like when he was alive.

In her dream, shortly before she had begun feeling premonitions of disaster, the long, vaguely humanoid face of the ancient had smiled at her, and slowly winked.

“Gillian! Dr. Baskin? It’s time!”

She opened her eyes. She lifted her arm and glanced at her watch. It might as well have been set by Toshio’s voice. Trust a midshipman at his word, she remembered. Tell him to fetch you in one hour, and he’ll time it down to the second. Early in the voyage she had had to threaten dire measures to get him to call her “sir”—or the anachronistic “ma’am”—only in every third sentence, rather than every other word.

“On my way, Toshio! Just a minute!” She rose to her feet and stretched. The rest break had been useful. Her mind had been in knots that only quiet could smooth.

She hoped to finish here and get back to Streaker within three days, about the time Creideiki had planned to move the ship. By then she and Dennie should have worked out the environmental needs of the Kiqui—how to take a small sample group with them back to the Center for Uplift on Earth. If Streaker got away, and if humanity first filed a client claim, it could save the Kiqui from a far worse fate.

On her way through the trees, Gillian caught a glimpse of the ocean through a northeast gap in the greenery.

Will I be able to feel it here, when Tom calls? The Niss said his signal should be detectable anywhere on the planet.

All the ETs will hear it, for sure.

She carefully kept all psychic energies low, as Tom had insisted she do. But she did form an old-fashioned prayer with her mouth, and cast it northward, over the waves.

“I’ll bet this will please Dr. Dart,” Toshio said. “Of course, the sensors might not be types he’d want. But the ‘bot is still operational.”

Gillian examined the small robot-link screen. She was no expert on robotics or planetology. But she understood the principles.

“I think you’re right, Toshio. The X-ray spectrometer works. So do the laser zapper and the magnetometer. Can the robot still move?”

“Like a little rock lobster! The only thing it can’t do is float back up. Its buoyancy tanks were ruptured when the piece of coral crashed down on it.”

“Where is the robot now?”

“It’s on a ledge about ninety meters down.” Toshio tapped the tiny keyboard and brought a holo schematic into space in front of the screen. “It’s given me a sonar map that deep. I’ve held off going any lower until I talk to Dr. Dart. We can only go down, one ledge at a time. Once the robot leaves a spot there’s no going back.”

The schematic showed a slightly tapered cylindrical cavity, descending into the metal-rich silicate rock of Kithrup’s thin crust: The walls were studded with outcrops and ledges, like the one the crippled probe now rested on.

A solid shaft ran up the great cavity, tilted at a slight angle. It was the great drill-root Toshio and Dennie had blown apart a few days earlier. The upper end rested against one rim of its own underwater excavation. The shaft disappeared into unknown territory below the mapped area.

“I think you’re right, Toshio,” Gillian grinned and squeezed the boy’s shoulder. “Charlie will be glad about this. It may help get him off Creideiki’s back. Do you want to ring him up with the news?”

Toshio was obviously pleased with the compliment, but taken aback by Gillian’s offer. “Uh, no, thank you, sir. I mean, couldn’t you just tuck this in when you report to the ship, today? I’m sure Dr. Dart will have questions I’m not qualified to handle…”

Gillian couldn’t blame Toshio. Presenting good news to Charles Dart was barely more pleasant than delivering bad news. But Toshio would have to come to grips with the chimp planetologist sooner or later. It would be best if he learned to deal with the problem from the start.

“Sorry, Toshio. Dr. Dart is all yours. Don’t forget that I’m leaving here in a few days. You’re the one who’s going to have to … satisfy Charlie, when he asks you to put in thirty-hour shifts.”

Toshio nodded seriously, taking her advice soberly until she managed to catch eye contact with him. She grinned until he couldn’t help but blush and smile.

H
urrying to get to the bridge before watch change, Akki took a shortcut through the outlock. In his haste he was halfway across the wide chamber before he noticed anything different.

He did an overhead flip to stop. His gill-lungs heaved, and he cursed himself for an idiot, speeding and doing fancy maneuvers when there just wasn’t enough oxygen available!

Akki looked about. The outlock was as empty as he had ever seen it.

The captain’s gig had been lost at the Shallow Cluster. Heavy sleds and a lot of equipment had been moved to the Thennanin wreck, and Lieutenant Hikahi had taken the skiff there only yesterday.

There was a cluster of activity around the longboat, the last and largest of Streaker’s pinnaces. Several crewfen used mechanical spiders to carry crates into the small spacecraft. Akki forgot his haste to be early on duty, and kicked a lazy spiral toward the activity.

He swam up behind one spider-riding dolphin. The fin’s spider carried a large box in its waldo-arms.

“Hey Sup-peh, w-what’s going on here?” Akki kept his sentences short and simple. He was getting better speaking Anglic in oxywater, but if a Calafian couldn’t speak properly, what were the others to think?

The other dolphin looked up. “Oh, hello, Mr. Akki. Change of orders is what-t. We’re checking the longboat for space worthiness. Also, we been told to load these cratesss.”

“What are vey … er, what’s in the boxes?”

“Dr. Metz’s records, seemsss-s,” the spider’s third manipulator arm waved toward the pile of waterproof cartons. “Imagine, all our grandparents ‘n’ grandchildren here, listed on mag chips. It gives you a feeling of continuity, don’t it-t-t?”

Sup-peh was from the South Atlantic community, a clan which took pride in quaint speech. Akki wondered if it were really eccentricity as much as plain dimness. “I thought you were on the supply run to the Thennanin ship?” he asked. Sup-peh was usually assigned tasks that required minimal finesse.

“That I were, Mr. Akki. But-t-t those runs have been stopped. The ship’s closed down, didn’t you hear? We’re all swimming in circles’t-til it’s clearer about the captain’sss condition.”

“W-what?” Akki choked. “…the captain …?”

“Got hurt in an inspection outside the ship. ‘Lectrocuted, I hear. Barely found him before his breather ran out-t. Been unconscious all this time. Takkata-Jim’s in charge.”

Akki lay there in shock. He was too stunned to notice Sup-peh turn suddenly and hurry back to work as a very large dark figure swam up.

“May I help you, Mister Akki?” The giant dolphin’s tone sounded almost sarcastic.

“K’tha-Jon,” Akki shook himself. “What’s happened to the captain?”

Something in the bosun’s attitude chilled Akki. And it wasn’t just the minimal pretense of respect for Akki’s rank. K’tha-Jon let out a quick squirt of Trinary.

* Suggestions come

to me,

* How you can know more—*

* Go and ask your

leader,

* Who awaits you on the shore—*

With an almost insolent wave of one harness arm, K’tha-Jon flipped about and swam off to rejoin his workcrew. The wake from his mighty flukes pushed Akki backward two meters. Akki knew better than to call him back. Something in K’tha-Jon’s Trinary triple entendre told him it would be useless. He decided to take it as a warning, and turned to hurry toward the hull lift to the bridge.

He was suddenly aware of how many of the best fen in Streaker’s crew were absent. Tsh’t, Hikahi, Karkaett, S’tat and Lucky Kaa were all gone to the Thennanin wreck. That left K’tha-Jon senior petty officer!

And Keepiru was away as well. Akki hadn’t believed the gossip he had heard about the pilot. He had always thought Keepiru the bravest fin in the crew, besides the fastest swimmer. He wished Keepiru, and Toshio, were here right now. They’d help him find out what was going on!

Near the lift, Akki encountered a group of four Tursiops, clustered in a corner of the outlock doing nothing in particular. They wore morose expressions and lay in listless postures.

“Sus’ta, what’s going on here?” he asked. “Don’t you fen have work to do?”

The messman looked up and twisted his tail in the dolphin’s equivalent of a shrug. “What’sss the point, Mr. Akki?”

“The point ish … is we do our duty! Come on, what’s got you all in such a f-funk?”

“The c-captain…” one of the others began.

Akki cut him off: “The captain would be the first to say you should p-p-persevere!” He switched to Trinary.

* Focus on the far

Horizon—

* On Earth!

Where we are needed—*

Sus’ta blinked, and tried to drop his forlorn stance. The others followed suit.

“Yesssir, Mr. Akki. We’ll’t-try”

Akki nodded. “Very good, then. Carry on in the spirit of K-k-keneenk.”

He entered the lift and clicked out a code for the bridge. As the doors slid shut, he saw the fen swim away, presumably toward their work stations.

Ifni! It had been hard to posture and act reassuring, when all he really wanted to do was squeeze the others for information. But in order to be reassuring he had to seem to know more than they!

Turtle-bites! Disfunctioning motors! How badly is the captain hurt? How will we stand a chance, if Creideiki is taken from us?

He decided to be as innocuous and unnoticed as possible for a while … until he found out what was going on. He knew a middie was in the most exposed position of all, with an officer’s duties and burdens and none of the protections.

And a middie was always the last to find out what was going on!

T
he excavation was nearly ready. The Thennanin battleship had been reamed and braced. Soon they’d be able to fill the cylindrical cavity with its intended cargo and be off.

Hannes Suessi couldn’t wait. He’d had it with working underwater. If the truth be told, he’d about had it with fins, too.

Gads, the stories he would be able to tell back home! He had bossed work gangs under the smog oceans of Titan. He had helped herd adenine comets through the Soup Nebula. He had even worked with those crazy Amerindians and Israelis who were trying to terraform Venus. But never had a job taught him the laws of perversity as this one had!

Almost all of the materials they’d had to work with were of alien manufacture, with weird ductility and even stranger quantum conductivities. He’d had to check the psionic impedance of almost every connection himself, and still their masked marvel would probably leak telekinetic static all over the sky when it took off!

Fins! They were the frosting! They’d flawlessly perform the most delicate operation, then swim about in circles squealing Primal nonsense when the opening of a hatchway set off a particular pattern of sonar reflections.

And every time a job was finished, they called for old Suessi. Check it for us, Hannes, they’d ask. Make sure we’ve done it right.

They tried so damned hard. They couldn’t help feeling like half-finished clients of wolfling patrons in an impossibly hostile galaxy, especially when it was all true.