Startide Rising (46 page)

To set when, on what far shore
,

Dolphins
?
Dolphins
?

B
eie Chohooan cursed the parsimony of her superiors.

If the Synthian High Command had sent a mothership to observe the battle of the fanatics, she might have been able to approach the war zone in a flitter—a vessel too small to be detected. As it was, she had been compelled to use a starship large enough to travel through transfer points and hyperspace, too small to defend itself adequately, and too large to sneak past the combatants.

She almost fired upon the tiny globe that nosed around the asteroid that sheltered her ship. Just in time she recognized the little wazoon-piloted probe. She pressed a stud to open a docking port, but the wazoon hung back, sending a frantic series of tight laser pulses.

Your position discovered, it flashed. Enemy missiles closing …

Beie uttered her vilest damnations. Every time she almost got close enough to ‘cast a message through the jamming to the Earthlings, she had to flee from some random, paranoid tentacle of battle.

Come in quickly and dock! She tapped out a command to the wazoon. Too many of the loyal little clients had died for her already.

Negative. Flee, Beie. Wazoo-two will distract …

Beie snarled at the disobedience. The three wazoon who remained on the shelf to her left cringed and blinked their large eyes at her.

The scout globe sped off into the night.

Beie closed the port and fired up her engines. Carefully, she weaved her way through the lanes between chunks of primordial stone, away from the area of danger.

Too late, she thought as she glanced at the threat board. The missiles were closing too fast.

A sudden glare from behind told of the fate of the little wazoon. Beie’s whiskered upper lip curled as she contemplated a suitable way to get even with the fanatics, if she ever got a chance.

Then the missiles arrived, and she was suddenly too busy even for nasty, pleasant thoughts.

She blasted two missiles to vapor with her particle gun. Two others fired back; their beams were barely refracted by her shields.

Ah, Earthlings, she contemplated. You’ll not even know I was ever here. For all you know, you have been forsaken by all the universe.

But don’t let that stop you, wolflings. Fight on! Snarl at your pursuers! And when all your weapons fail, bite them!

Beie destroyed four more missiles before one managed to explode close by, sending her broken ship spinning, burning, into the dusty Galactic dark.

T
he night blew wet with scattered blustery sheets of rain. The glossy broadleaf plants waved uncertainly under contrary gusts from a wind that seemed unable to decide on a direction. The dripping foliage glistened when two of Kithrup’s nearby tiny moons shone briefly through the clouds.

At the far southern end of the island, a crude thatch covering allowed rain to seep through in slow trickles. It dripped onto the finely pitted hull of a small spaceship. The water formed small meniscus pools atop the gently curving metal surface, then ran off in little rivulets. The tappity-tap of the heavy raindrops hitting the thatch was joined by a steady patter as streams of runoff poured onto the smashed mud and vegetation beneath the cylindrical flying machine.

The trickles sluiced over the stubby stasis flanges. They sent jagged trails over the forward viewports, dark and clear in the intermittent moonlight.

Trails penetrated the narrow cracks around the aft airlock, using the straight channels to pour dribbling streams out onto the muddy ground.

There came a tiny mechanical hiss, barely louder than the rainfall. The cracks around the airlock widened almost imperceptibly. Neighboring streams merged to fill the new crevices. A pool began to form in a dirt basin below the hatch.

The doorway cracked open a little farther. More streams merged to pour in, as if seeking to enter the ship. All at once a gurgling stream poured from the bottom of the crack. The flow became a gushing waterfall that splashed into a puddle below. Then, just as abruptly, the torrent subsided.

The armored hatch slid open with a muted sigh. The rain sent a flurry of slanting droplets pelting into the opening.

A dark, helmeted figure stood in the threshold, ignoring the onslaught. It turned to look left and right, then stepped out and splashed in the puddle. The hatch shut again with a whine and a small click.

The figure bent into the wind, searching in the darkness for a trail.

Dennie sat up suddenly at the sound of wet footsteps. With her hand at her breast she whispered.

“Toshio?”

The tent’s fly was pushed aside and the flap zipped open. For a moment a dark shape loomed. Then a quiet voice whispered. “Yeah, it’s me.”

Dennie’s rapid pulse subsided. “I was afraid it was somebody else.”

“Who’d you expect, Dennie? Charlie Dart? Come out of his tent to ravish you? Or, better yet, one of the Kiqui?” He teased her gently, but could not hide the tension in his voice.

He shrugged out of his drysuit and helmet which he hung on a peg by the opening. In his underwear, Toshio crawled over to his own sleeping bag and slid in.

“Where have you been?”

“Nowhere. Go back to sleep, Dennie.”

The rain pattered on the fly in an uneven tattoo. She remained sitting up, looking at him in the faint light from the opening. She could see little more than the whites of his eyes, staring straight up at nothing.

“Please Tosh, tell me. When I woke up and you weren’t in your sleeping bag…” Her voice trailed off as he turned to look back at her. The difference that had grown in Toshio Iwashika the last week or so was never more manifest than in his narrowed expression, than in this slitted intensity in his eyes.

She heard him sigh finally. “All right, Dennie. I was just over at the longboat. I snuck inside and had a look around.”

Dennie’s pulse sped again. She started to speak, stopped, then finally said, “Wasn’t that dangerous? I mean there’s no telling how Takkata-Jim might react! Especially if he really is a traitor.”

Toshio shrugged. “There was something I had to find out.”

“But how could you get in and out without being caught?”

Toshio rolled over onto one elbow. She saw a brief flash of white as he smiled slightly. “A middie sometimes knows things even the engineering officers never find out, Dennie. Especially when it comes to hiding places aboard ship. When off-duty time comes, there’s always a pilot or a lieutenant around thinking up homework for idle hands and fins … always just a little more astrogation or protocol to study, for instance. Akki and I used to grab sack time in the hold of the longboat. We learned how to open the locks without it flashing on the control room.”

Dennie shook her head. “I’m glad you didn’t tell me you were going, after all. I would have died of worry.”

Toshio frowned. Now Dennie was beginning to sound like his mother again. Dennie still wasn’t happy about having to leave while he stayed behind. Toshio hoped she wouldn’t take this opportunity to bring up the subject again.

She lay down and faced him, using her arm as a pillow. She thought for a moment, then whispered. “What did you find out?”

Toshio closed his eyes. “You might as well know,” he said. “I’ll want you to tell Gillian in case I can’t get through to her in the morning. I found out what Takkata-Jim is doing with those bombs he took from Charlie.

“He’s converting them to fuel for the longboat.”

Dennie blinked. “But … but what can we do about it?”

“I don’t know! I’m not even sure we have to do anything about it. After all, in a couple weeks his accumulators would be recharged enough to lift him off anyway. Maybe Gillian doesn’t care.

“On the other hand, it might be darned important. I still haven’t figured it all out yet. I may have to do something pretty drastic.”

He had seen the partially dismantled bombs through the thick window of the security door to the longboat’s specimen lab. Getting to them would be considerably more difficult than simply sneaking back aboard.

“Whatever happens,” he tried to reassure her, “I’m sure it will all be all right. You just make certain your notes are all packed properly in the morning. That data on the Kiqui is the second most important thing to come out of this crazy odyssey, and it’s got to get back. Okay?”

“Sure, Tosh.”

He let gravity pull him over onto his back. He closed his eyes and breathed slowly to feign sleep.

“Toshio?”

The young man sighed. “Yes, Denn…”

“Um, it’s about Sah’ot. He’s only leaving to escort me. Otherwise I think you’d have a mutiny on your hands.”

“I know. He wants to stay and listen to those underground ‘voices’ of his.” Toshio rubbed his eyes, wondering why Dennie was keeping him awake with all this. He already had listened to Sah’ot’s importunities.

“Don’t shrug them off like that, Tosh. He says Creideiki listened to them, too, and that he had to cut the channel to break the captain out of a listening trance, the sounds were so fascinating.”

“The captain is a brain-damaged cripple.” The words were bitter. “And Sah’ot is an egocentric, unstable…”

“I used to think so too,” Dennie interrupted. “He used to scare me until I learned he was really quite sweet and harmless. But even if we could suppose the two fen were having hallucinations, there’s the stuff I’ve been finding out about the metal-mounds.”

“Mmmph,” Toshio commented sleepily. “What is it? More about the metal-mounds being alive?”

Dennie winced a little at his mild disparagement. “Yes, and the weird eco-niche of the drill-trees. Toshio, I did an analysis on my pocketcomp, and there’s only one possible solution! The drill-tree shafts are part of the life cycle of one organism—an organism that lives part of its life cycle above the surface as a superficially simple coral colony, and later falls into the pit prepared for it…”

“All that clever adaptation and energy expended to dig a grave for itself?” Toshio cut in.

“No! Not a grave! A channel! The metal-mound is only the beginning of this creature’s life cycle … the larval stage. Its destiny as an adult form lies below, below the shallow crust of the planet, where convective veins of magma can provide all the energy a metallo-organic life form might ever need!”

Toshio tried earnestly to pay attention, but his thoughts kept drifting—to bombs, to traitors, to worry over Akki, his missing comrade, and to a man somewhere far to the north, who deserved to have someone waiting for him if—when he finally returned to his island launching point.

“…only thing wrong is there’s no way I see that such a life form could have evolved! There’s no sign of intermediate forms, no mention of any possible precursors in the old Library records on Kithrup … and this is certainly unique enough a life form to merit mention!”

“Mmm-hmmm.”

Dennie looked over at Toshio. His arm was over his eyes and he breathed slowly as if drifting off into slumber. But she saw a fine vein on his temple pulse rapidly, and his other fist clenched at even intervals.

She lay there watching him in the dimness. She wanted to shake him and make him listen to her!

Why am I pestering him like this. She suddenly asked herself. Sure, the stuff’s important, but it’s all intellectual, and Toshio’s got our corner of the world on his shoulders. He’s so young, yet he’s carrying a fighting man’s load now.

How do I feel about that?

A queasy stomach told her. I’m pestering him because I want attention.

I want his attention she corrected. In my clumsy way I’ve been trying to give him opportunities to …

Nervously, she faced her own foolishness.

If I, the older one, can get my signals this crossed, I can hardly expect him to figure out the cues, she realized at last.

Her hand reached out. It stopped just short of the glossy black hair that lay in long, wet strands over his temples. Trembling, she looked again at her feelings, and saw only fear of rejection holding her back.

As if on a will of its own, her hand moved to touch the soft stubble on Toshio’s cheek. The youth started and turned to look at her, wide-eyed.

“Toshio,” she swallowed. “I’m cold.”

W
hen there came a moment of relative calm, Tom made a mental note. Remind me next time, he told himself, not to go around kicking hornets’ nests.

He sucked on one end of the makeshift breathing tube. The other end protruded from the surface of a tiny opening in the weedscape. Fortunately, he didn’t have to pull in quite so much air this time, to supplement what his mask provided. There was more dissolved oxygen in this area.

Battle beams sizzled overhead again, and weak cries carried to him from the miniature war going on above. Twice, the water trembled from nearby explosions.

At least this time I don’t have to worry about being baked by the near misses, he consoled himself. All these stragglers have are hand weapons.

Tom smiled at that irony. All they had were hand weapons.

He had picked off two of the Tandu in that first ambush, before they could snap up their particle guns to fire back.

More importantly, he managed to wing the shaggy Episiarch before diving head-first into a hole in the weeds.

He had cut it close. One near-miss had left second degree burns on the sole of his bare left foot. In that last instant he glimpsed the Episiarch rearing in outrage, a nimbus of unreality coruscating like a fiery halo around its head. Tom thought he momentarily saw stars through that wavering brilliance.

The Tandu flailed to stay upon their wildly bucking causeway. That probably was what spoiled their much vaunted aim, and accounted for his still being alive.

As he had expected, the Tandu’s vengeance hunt had led them westward. He popped up, from time to time, to keep their interest keen with brief enfilades of needles.