Warhorse (22 page)

As yet there was hardly enough data to define a “textbook” space horse calving; but if one was ever written, Ferrol decided, Man o' War's would probably be close to the mark. Two and a half hours after the bulge first appeared the space horse's skin abruptly split, opening like a long toothless zipper along the calf's entire hundred-meter length. Seconds later the new space horse drifted free, a shiver rippling through its lighter-colored skin the only sign of life. In theory even such a young space horse had enough telekinetic strength to play havoc with the web boats, but in practice it had never happened and this time was no exception. The calf floated docilely as the boats completed their capture; swinging in right behind them, Kennedy caught the bundle of rein lines in the lander's forward grapple. Seated to Ferrol's left and a row behind him, Sso-ngii stiffened and then relaxed as the rows of tiny indicator lights on the amplifier helmet flicked to green. “That's it,
Amity
,” Ferrol said into the mike. “Contact's made. Looks solid.”

“Very good, Commander,” Roman's voice came back. “Better pull it back a little, as soon as you can. Hhom-jee? Any sign of trouble with Man o' War?”

“Manawanninni is fine,” the Tampy's voice cut in. “His recovery is nearly complete, and he shows no sign of stress.”

Ferrol snorted under his breath. “Glad to hear it,” he said dryly. Their third calving run had resulted in what Hhom-jee had described as “mild stress,” and it had taken him and Sso-ngii half an hour to calm the space horse down. He had no desire to be out in a flimsy lander the next time something like that happened. “So. I guess we're ready to try this.”

“I guess we are,” Roman agreed, with only a slight hesitation. “We'll move a few kilometers away from you first, give you plenty of room. Just in case there's a problem.”

Ferrol stole a glance at Demothi. There were lines of tension showing through the placid serenity in his face. “Good idea,” he agreed. “By the way, have you picked a name for the calf yet?”

“I thought we'd just go with ‘Quentin,' since this is our fifth calving.”

“Not particularly inventive.”

“Our files fail to list the original Man o' War's progeny,” Roman said, just a bit tartly.

Ferrol grimaced. In the excitement of the calving, he'd almost forgotten that he and Roman were on opposite sides of the war here; that the captain would almost certainly see a success by Demothi as a dangerous destabilization of the fragile truce
Amity
's breeding program had provided to human/Tampy relations. “Quentin it is, sir,” he said.

For a few minutes there was silence, and Ferrol felt occasional tugs as the calf began its first, tentative movements. Most of that motion was away from the lander, and Ferrol watched as Kennedy carefully played out the rein lines to their full half-kilometer length. As if she'd hooked a rare and giant fish…He shook the image from his mind. “Better get on with it,” he told her.

“Right.” Kennedy gave the instruments a leisurely scan. “Okay. Rein lines all the way out and tight;
Amity
's just passed the five-kilometer mark. They're slowing now to zero-vee relative…all our cameras are on and transmitting.”

“We're in position, Commander,” Roman's voice confirmed. “Whenever you're ready.”

“Yes, sir.” Ferrol turned to Demothi, sitting quietly there between Sso-ngii and Wwis-khaa, and braced himself. “Go ahead.”

Sso-ngii removed the amplifier helmet and offered it to Demothi; with only the slightest hesitation, the other took it and placed it carefully over his head. Ferrol held his breath…and his brain had just enough time to register the indicators' abrupt switch to red—

And he was slammed hard into his seat as Quentin bolted.

“Sso-ngii!” he snapped, his body automatically gauging the acceleration at about a gee. The calf's full strength, probably—whatever Demothi had done, he'd done a damn good job of it. An instant later Quentin changed to a sideways motion, hurling Ferrol against his harness. The roar of maneuvering jets filled the lander; clamping his jaw tightly to protect his teeth, Ferrol watched as the two Tampies and Demothi fought to retrieve the helmet as it swayed erratically around them on its supporting cables. Quentin changed direction four more times before Wwis-khaa finally got a firm grip on the helmet and jammed it over his head. The lights changed, and the wild run began to ease up.

“Kennedy, figure out our course,” Ferrol ordered as soon as he could safely open his mouth again. “We'll want to curve back to the
Amity
—”

“Ferrol—the
Amity
,” Kennedy cut him off. “It's
gone
.”

“It's
what
?” Ferrol stabbed at his display controls. A complete steradian sweep showed nothing the size of a spaceship out there. “It can't be gone,” he said, immediately cursing himself for making such an asinine statement.
Relax
, he ordered himself harshly.
They wouldn't just Jump off and leave us. There's a good and proper explanation here. Somewhere.
“Are we still in the 11612 system?”

“Quentin's supposed to be too young to Jump,” Kennedy reminded him, hands playing over keys.

“I
know
what he's supposed to be—”

“And anyway, the spectrum matches,” Kennedy added as the computer finished its analysis.

Ferrol pursed his lips. The shock was fading, and he could feel his brain starting to work again. “Did you hear anything on the radio or laser?” he asked her.

She shook her head. “I was running the jets most of the time to try and smooth some of that out,” she reminded him, already keying the recorder rewind. “A short transmission could easily have been lost in the noise…here we are.” She listened a moment on her own headset, then keyed for speaker.

Roman's message was indeed brief. “Lander—Ferrol— Man o' War's spooking. Hhom-jee can't hold it—we'll be back—” The voice and hum of
Amity
's carrier cut off simultaneously.

Kennedy looked at Ferrol. “I think,” she said dryly, “we've just made a brand new discovery about space horses. Isn't science wonderful?”

“Just terrific,” he agreed. “How about it, Sso-ngii?” he asked, turning to face Demothi and the Tampies. “You want to tell me why Man o' War would suddenly spook and Jump when
Quentin
was the one who was scared?”

Demothi frowned. “What makes you think he would know—?”

Ferrol silenced him with a look. “Sso-ngii?”

“I do not know,” Sso-gnii replied. “I know that sometimes emotions can be communicated between nearby space horses; that is all.”

“Telepathy?”

Sso-ngii gave the short fingers-to-ear gesture that was the Tampy shrug. “What is telepathy?”

Kennedy chuckled. “Telepathy: any method of communication we don't yet understand.”

Ferrol snorted; but she was right. And anyway, the method hardly mattered at this point. “All right, then, try this one,” he said to Sso-ngii. “Assuming Quentin's panic was somehow transmitted to Man o' War, why did Man o' War Jump instead of coming to Quentin's aid?”

“You're anthropomorphizing,” Demothi said stiffly. “You can't expect a space horse to act like a human mother.”

“Mmo-thee is correct,” Sso-ngii said. “Perhaps Manawanninni heard only the calf's fear and Jumped as the calf wished to do.” His face twisted even more than usual. “Humans do not understand such complete sharing of feelings.”

“No, I think the noble Tampy empathy is probably beyond us,” Ferrol grunted. Something on Kennedy's board beeped. “Is that the
Amity
?” he asked, turning to scan his own displays.

Kennedy shook her head. “No—one of the outrider boats has found us with a coram laser. Basically repeating the captain's message.”

Ferrol hadn't thought about the fact that the three outriders would have been left behind, too. “Might as well head back to join them,” he told her. “Figure a course for Wwis-khaa to follow—I'll get our laser set up and tell them we're on our way.”

“Assuming Wwis-khaa can get Quentin to obey,” Kennedy reminded him.

Ferrol glanced at the Tampy, noted the glowing rows of tiny green lights on the helmet. “I think anyone who can manage a wild space horse should have no problems with Quentin,” he assured her. He turned back—

“But Wwis-khaa won't be Handling Quentin,” Demothi said. “I will be.”

Slowly, deliberately, Ferrol turned back again. Demothi had drawn himself up to his full height, an affectation which looked even more ridiculous while strapped into a lander seat than it had when standing upright in the captain's office. “What was that?” he asked mildly.

“I said I'll be Handling the calf,” Demothi repeated. “My orders from the Senate and the Admiralty—”

“You had your chance,” Ferrol cut him off, a flash of anger boiling through him. With all that had happened since Quentin bolted, he'd almost forgotten that Demothi's failure to control the calf was the end of a dream. The end of
his
dream… “You had your chance, and it's over.”

“It wasn't a fair trial.” Demothi's usual passive expression had vanished, replaced by an odd combination of determination and pleading. “It was a new experience, both for me and for Quentin, and neither of us had a chance to adjust. I've been thinking it through, and I believe I know what I did wrong.” He took a deep breath. “Please, Commander. Just one more chance.”

“In twenty-four hours or so,” Kennedy murmured, “Quentin'll be fully capable of Jumping.”

Ferrol looked sharply at her, the Senator's veiled warnings about her flooding back. She looked back at him, nothing but mild questioning on her face…

And she did, unfortunately, have a damn good point. If Demothi was ever to have a second chance, it had to be while the calf was still too young to Jump. “All right,” he ground out, giving an extra tightening tug on his harness. “
One
more chance, and that's it. Wwiskhaa, give him the helmet. Demothi, you concentrate on setting up a stable contact before you try anything fancy like moving—and if you feel Quentin panicking you take the helmet off damn quick. Got that?”

“Yes.” Demothi gave him a lopsided smile. “I won't fail.”

Right
, Ferrol thought sourly. Demothi accepted the helmet from Wwis-khaa and slid it over his head. The indicator lights blinked uncertainly, each flicking between red, orange, and green several times before finally settling down to green. The lander rocked gently once, but nothing worse happened; and as the lights continued their progression Ferrol had the eerie sense of watching history in the making. Demothi was going to make it…and then Ferrol dropped his eyes a fraction and focused on Demothi's face.

The man looked like he was going to explode.

“Sso-ngii!” Ferrol shouted…but he was too late. With another spine-wrenching tug the lander pulled sharply to the left. Ferrol's eyes came back to focus to find Sso-ngii reaching for the helmet, pulling against the lander's acceleration to try and get it off Demothi's head. The maneuvering jets kicked in again, and as they did so another lurch twisted the lander around, throwing Ferrol's head to face the side viewport and the dim red star visible there.

He was still facing that direction when the star vanished.

Q
UENTIN SUBSIDED, AND THE
maneuvering jets cut off, and for a long minute the lander was silent. A hundred curses chased each other through Ferrol's mind, none of them strong enough to adequately cover the impossibility that had just happened. Ahead, the edge of a brilliant blue-white star blazed painfully at them around Quentin's bulk; slowly, Ferrol turned from it to focus on Kennedy's profile. Perhaps sensing his movement, she turned to face him, and for a moment they just gazed at each other in silence. Apparently, a small section of Ferrol's mind decided, Kennedy's repertoire of curses didn't cover this situation, either.

“Well,” he said to her at last, “shall we see what we've got here?”

She took a deep breath. “Right. Okay.” Slowly, as if still half paralyzed by the shock of it, her fingers began to move across her keys. Ferrol watched them a moment, then turned around.

The two Tampies were sitting quietly, the helmet on Sso-ngii's head showing all green. Between them, Demothi had the expression over his filter mask of a small child who has insisted on carrying the family heirloom crystal and then dropped it. “We'll dispense with any spilled-milk recriminations for now,” Ferrol said, fighting to keep his voice calm and controlled. “Wwis-khaa, I want to know how Quentin managed that Jump.”

“I do not know—”

“Yes, you do,” Ferrol cut him off harshly. “You know, or at least have a good idea. What is it, that space horse calves
can
Jump at birth, but just can't see well enough to lock onto a target star?”

Wwis-khaa tilted his head. “It is possible.”

“But it is only a thought,” Sso-ngii cautioned. “The Tamplissta do not know for certain.”

“I'll settle for good half-assed theories at this point,” Ferrol countered. “So. How well could Quentin see? Wwis-khaa?”

The Tampy hesitated. “I do not believe he could see very well,” he said at last, mouthing the speculation with obvious reluctance.

Ferrol carefully unclenched his teeth. “Look,” he said, fighting hard against a sudden urge to wrap his fingers around someone's neck. “I understand how you hate to repeat anything you don't personally know to be a fact. But try and get it through your heads that we are
lost
; and the only way we're going to find our way back is if we have some answers.”

Silence. “Demothi, keep working on them,” Ferrol growled, the rage turning into disgust. “Do something useful for a change.” Turning away, he focused on Kennedy. “Got anything yet?”