by Andre Norton
2
Dr. Rael Cofort pulled on the flexible gauntlets of the biohaz suit and
made sure they were fastened securely. Last came the helmet, fitting snugly over her crown of braided hair. As the helmet locked into place the suit’s air system was automatically initiated, and the soft hiss of antiseptic air cooled her cheek. A green light flickered holographically, letting her know the suit com was also alive.
A moment later Rip Shannon’s voice came over the com: "Ready, team?"
"Aye." Four voices, including hers, echoed in her ears.
"Then let’s go."
Rip Shannon had been appointed squad leader for the expedition. Rael could see his dark face inside his helmet, his black eyes characterized by good humor and the formidable intelligence which marked him out as a natural leader. Behind him loomed Dane Thorson, the tall cargo apprentice who looked like the ancient illustrations of his Viking ancestors. Next to Rael, the short, slight engine tech Jasper Weeks checked the tools at his belt one last time, then stepped into the lock, moving with the characteristic high-step shuffle of free fall.
They waited in silence as the air pressure slowly dropped.
"Half air," said Rip. "Suit check."
Rael slapped the diagnostic tab on her chest; after a moment the ready light flickered to green.
"No leaks," she reported, and was echoed by the others.
Rip tabbed the lock control and then, at zero, keyed the outer lock, which slid silently open onto the jewel-pierced blackness of space.
Their helmet lights came on as each member of the squad hooked onto the cable uniting the two ships. Rip pushed off and glided along the cable for a moment; then his suit thrusters flared and he dwindled rapidly towards the alien ship. Dane followed. Then Rael flexed her toes to demagnetize her boots and pushed off into space. At first her movement merely intensified the feeling of falling; then, as she reached a safe distance from Jasper, she ignited her thrusters and her stomach settled as acceleration gripped her. Now it felt like flying. She grinned, remembering
Weeks’s thin face, grim behind his faceplate. He hated free fall outside the safety of a ship. For her, it was a feeling of freedom that never failed to boost her spirits.
The hull of the mystery ship glowed in the light of Mykos’s primary, showing up the heavy scoring that marred the smooth fairing. Rael was not a pilot, but she knew that this ship would not be easy to land on a planet.
It was time to decelerate. She pivoted around and triggered another blast from her thrusters, then pulled herself along to join Rip and Dane.
Against the hull Rip was already working quickly, mute evidence that this investigation was a race against time. Rael heard a soft click, knew that the open communicator had switched to a two-way link so that Rip and Dane could talk to each other without flooding everyone’s head with chatter. The two men worked quickly at the ship’s outer lock. Rael watched, aware of her adrenaline-pushed heart rate. Though she felt nothing, and saw nothing, she knew they were hurtling through space at tremendous speed. Any kind of space dust could rip through their suits and kill them and they wouldn’t necessarily see it coming.
As they waited, Rael saw Jasper pat the weapon at his side, and wondered if he, like she, was also thinking of the hazards they were exposed to—only in Jasper’s case, he seemed to be worried about the very real possibility of space pirates. Not that they carried blasters, but the weapons they nicknamed sleeprods were better than nothing: the blast of sonics they emitted could temporarily scramble the nervous system of any oxygen breather.
The lock opened; they went in.
The general communicator clicked on again.
"All right, let’s do this just like we’ve drilled," Rip said.
He and Dane moved in first, scanning swiftly for anything amiss—from bodies to obvious traps. They gestured Jasper and Rael in. Rael was glad to be inside the relative safety of a hull once again. She clicked on the mags in her boots, and stepped to the decking.
The inner lock showed nothing wrong; it was clean and plain, and on
the control console green lights peacefully glowed, except for the red light indicating the lock still open to space.
Rip worked quickly at the controls, which Rael saw were arranged differently than those on the Terran ships she was used to. But they were located at the same general height, indicating use by beings about the size of humans.
Rip gave a short exclamation of satisfaction and the outer lock shut behind them. She heard the hiss of air pressure, and after a minute or so the inner lock opened. The two checked it, stepped through, and Rael and Jasper followed.
Now it was Rael’s turn. She activated the scanner clipped to her suit, and watched the ripple of the diagnostics in its display. Within a few seconds she had her readout, and looked up to report: "It’s breathable, pressure lighter than we’re used to—about the same as Terran high mountains."
The information was for the general report. They would still keep their suits intact.
"Humanoids, just as Tau predicted," Rip said, sounding interested. Then, "Let’s get going."
Moving fast, they headed for the engine deck, finding no one dead or alive on their way. Life support was still running, which indicated the ship had some power left. When they reached the engine deck and found no signs of tampering or presence, Rip nodded at Jasper, who almost dove at the complicated engineering console.
"Let’s head for the control deck," Rip suggested. They worked their way forward, still finding no sign of occupancy. When they reached the control hatch, Rip opened it and looked through. "No one here, either. Chances are there’s no one on board, then." He turned to Dane. "You check the cargo hold and hydro. Doctor, check the galley and surgery."
Rael made her way back along the curved accessways toward the galley and surgery. Her sleeprod was again clipped to her belt. In one hand she held her diagnostic scanner, this time keyed to the heat sensors in the unlikely case there was someone hiding in one of the storage areas.
Nothing showed up, and she moved to the surgery console, and stopped to look around. It was almost familiar— the arrangement of cupboards and slide tables was accessible to humans, but the organization was unlike that which she was used to on most Terran Federation ships. She found a computer console, and looked it over, again surprised by the unfamiliar layout, the width of the keytabs.
She tried a series of tabs, and at last reached a combination that activated the console. Lights flickered. An unfamiliar script flowed across the screen, in a color combination she found odd. Even the prompt was slightly different than she expected.
"Weeks here," came Jasper’s voice, quick and eager. "Fuel is about ninety-eight-percent max."
A moment later Rip’s voice was heard: "Relayed it to the Queen. Stotz is on his way with the fuel tap equipment. Dane? Rael?"
"Cargo hold is full," Dane’s voice reported. "Can’t read the script.
Maybe we can open these boxes later. I just entered the hydro lab—" He stopped, then Rael heard a short intake of breath from the apprentice cargo master.
"Found something?" Rip’s voice was urgent.
"Someone," Dane said gruffly. "Two someones—not human. Ship’s cats. They’re in pretty bad shape."
Rael winced. "I’ll be right there," she promised.
She turned her attention back to the surgery computer. With great care she experimented with key combinations. At last one caused a flicker, and a menu of icons appeared—but next to each entry was a pair of symbols that looked like empty brackets.
She hit the keys that had gotten the results, came up with more empty brackets. "Surgery log seems to have been cleaned out," she reported.
"Ship’s log and navcomp same," came Rip’s voice. "Looks like an organized abandonment."
Rael shook her head as she closed the computer down and moved to the
galley. Again she scanned for known biohazards, but nothing came up on her scanner. She found the galley console and
activated it, using the keys that looked most like the active ones in the surgery. She was rewarded with a lit display, which not only included the galley console but also caused lights to flicker on various storage compartments around the little room. But nothing else was to be gleaned from this console.
She retraced her steps, and hurried down to the cargo area. The storage space was larger than the Queen's, and it took a little time to find Dane Thorson.
The cargo apprentice turned away from the console area and fell in step beside her. "Over here," he said.
He led her down a corridor of stacked containers to another hatchway. Rael braced herself—and despite her determination to be detached and professional, when she first saw the two small bodies, her eyes stung. The cats were unmarked by any signs of violence; they lay curled together, quite close to the door. One lifted its head, then the other, and four eyes regarded her weakly.
"Just gave them a few drops of water," Dane said. "Seemed to help."
His tone was apologetic, as if he expected to have made the wrong decision. Rael said, "You did right. I’ll give them a bit more now, and I think we’d best leave them. Craig and I can bring over a case to transport them back to the Queen's lab."
She busied herself with her diagnostic tool, glad for the time to gain control of her emotions. Again the display indicating no known biohazards—of course, there was always the chance of some new, and lethal-to-humans, biotics. They could isolate the cats on board the Queen, and check more carefully as the animals recuperated.
"Looks like they were accidentally shut in," she said, glad her voice, at least, sounded detached.
"Nearly starved," Dane said, nodding.
She carefully dripped a few drops from her water cache onto each cat’s muzzle, and watched the raspy tongues lick it off. When the cats showed no more interest in the water, she detached a thin, light shock blanket
from the equipment in her backpack, snapped it open, then refolded it, gently making a nest for the animals. Even for the short time they had to wait for better care, she wanted them warm.
At last she moved back, and looked around the hydroponics setup.
Dane indicated the rows of plants. "Luckily they left this lab on automatic. The cats must have gotten water by licking moisture off the leaves after they were misted."
Rael stooped to examine several unfamiliar plants. Some of them showed gnaw marks; the cats appeared to have experimented with eating the plants. "There might have been a few vermin in here. Otherwise, it looks like they tried to make do with vegetables." She pointed at a half-eaten, yellow gourdlike shape.
Dane nodded, moving slowly among the plants.
Rael turned in the other direction, and was arrested by the gleam of console lights through dark blue-green leaves. She moved quickly toward it. A tiny console, set into a little cubicle mostly hidden by tall plants and by a high stool, was lit. Directly below it rested a pile of books, holo cubes, and miscellaneous personal paraphernalia. She wondered if these items had sat on the ledge into which the computer console was built—and if the cats had knocked it down.
When she touched the now-familiar key combination, this time the menu offered a row of choices that of course she couldn’t read. "There’s a live log here in the hydro lab," she reported over the general linkup.
"Good," Rip’s voice came over the com. "Nothing up here—everything’s been nulled out."
Rael stared at the screen before her, wondering if this was the only clue to the identity of the ship’s owners. Her first instinct was to download whatever was in this computer, but she didn’t try to extract one of the tiny quantumtapes from the pack at her belt. Whatever kind of data-transfer system this computer had, it didn’t use Terran standards—there was no little round slot to drop a tape cylinder into.
Dane appeared. He half-reached for the console, then pulled his hand back. "Don’t want to risk cutting off the maintenance cycle."
Rael nodded. "Right. We’ll leave this for Tang. If anyone can figure it out, it’s he."
They left the lab, and moved back through the cargo bay. In silence Dane Thorson paced along beside her. She glanced about at stacks of wares in the big bay, and to her surprise she recognized some of the scripts. "Isn’t that Zacathan? And there’s Persian. This ship must have been in the Zatah colonies, or traded for Zatahi goods. But the rest—"
"Most of this is Kanddoyd, I think," Dane said diffidently.
A spurt of amusement made Rael fight against a grin. Of course he would recognize that script. Most of the crew had been studying the sparse data on the Kanddoyd sphere of influence as soon as the Queen had gone into hyper. While Rael had focused on biological information, Dane Thorson and Jan Van Ryke had kept to the cultural end—everything they would need to know to aid them in the prospect of making trade.
That in itself was not amusing. Any good crew crammed available data when heading for new territory. It was his manner, and the fact that—encased as she was in a biohaz suit which was just as sexless as his—he still wouldn’t look at her.
As she stepped closer to a series of oddly shaped containers to get a better look, she worked to make certain her face was absolutely straight, just in case he did glance down into her helmet. Her mind had gone straight back to Canuche, to the outdoor market of Canuche Town, when she had taken a length of gorgeous blue Thornen silk and moved through a few basic steps of an Ibis dance.
She had intended to help her old crewmate Deke Tatarcoff make a good sale, and hadn’t thought beyond how spectacularly well the silk would drape and flutter through the air. She had forgotten the effect the dance had on watchers, and happening to glance up at the tall, blond cargo apprentice, she had surprised a look of what she considered to be perfectly normal, healthy male appreciation on his face—an expression which was almost immediately followed by dismay and then embarrassment.
"Cats, some human trade items, interior design reasonably accessible—it all points to humanoids, doesn’t it?" she said, keeping her voice cool and professional.
Dane seemed glad for the unexceptionable subject. "There are some handwritten additions to some of the container labels. The script is nothing I’ve ever seen."
Rael nodded as they moved back through the silent corridors of cargo. Her mind was not on alien script, but on Dane Thorson, who was one of the Solar Queen's most surprising anomalies. Memory also produced an intense visual image: Dane working like a madman to throw burning barrels of ammonium nitrate into the sea despite not only the painful burns he was enduring but the possibility of being blown into atoms at any moment. And the others—never Dane—had told her of equally heroic action on Trewsworld and other places. Afterward, instead of talking about his experience or expecting praise, Dane seemed to want to pretend these things had never happened.
Rael was a physician, and though her main area of study had been epidemiology, she had also done thorough studies of human and xeno psychology. Dane was a knot of intriguing contradictions, and the prospect of unraveling him was one that appealed to the professional in her.
But life experience had taught her patience.
In the hatchway leading back toward the entry lock, she said, "We’ll probably never be able to categorize all the varieties of human biology out in space."
Dane said, "In training they told us that evolution took millions of years on Terra. On other worlds, especially where humans don’t fit, it can take just a few generations."
"We are remarkably adaptable," Rael said. "Though in some cases there is a tremendous loss of life in the meantime." She thought of some of the terrible human tragedies behind the dry, academic prose of her study tapes. "It was inevitable that humans would try to help the adaptation process, in some cases, with bioengineering."
Dane blinked over at her. "I thought that was illegal."
"It is—in the Federation," she said. "But the farther you get away from Federation jurisdiction, the more chances people are willing to take. Unfortunately, not for the g
ood of colonies, either."
She stopped there, but saw the impact of her words in Dane’s sober eyes. Another tough lesson had been reading about some of the horrors perpetrated by unscrupulous bio-engineers in their experiments to try to produce superhumans, or other variations. Most of those quickly failed; the ones that haunted Rael and her empathic fellow students were the stories about bioengineering meant to help humans adapt the more quickly to this or that planet, with unexpected and tragic results.
Shaking off the thoughts, she found the others gathered in the lock. Stotz had just arrived.
Rip said, "Captain wants you here to help the fuel transfer, Dane. Rael, you’re released to get back to the Queen and see about the transfer of the cats. Tau’s got transfer equipment packed and waiting for you at the other end of the line."
"Excellent," she said. This was the kind of duty she liked most—saving lives.
3
The engine crew, with Dane among them, watched anxiously as Johan Stotz lifted the platinum-alloy pipette carefully away from the inspection gland on the engine feed. A single drop of fuel glistened at its tip, not tear-shaped as it would have been planetside, but globular in the microgravity of the alien ship.
Carefully, the chief engineer inserted the pipette into the fuel analyzer, a bulky cylinder with a simple readout on it above a small console.
It was interesting, Dane reflected, that although the personal appointments of the alien ship were very different from the human norm, the engines were almost identical in design. That had been one of the lessons at Pool training: that cultures changed, but physics didn’t.
Stotz extracted the pipette and locked the breech of the tester. He tapped rapidly at the tester’s console, which hummed and clicked.
Symbols flashed rapidly across the readout.
Then there was a muffled whoomp and the tester tilted slightly.
"That’s it!" Stotz exclaimed. He peered at the readout. "Two third and one fourth array superheavy," he said. "Ganeshium, Kalium, and Lokium. Not our mix, but a number-ten catalysis screen and an oh-six-hundred feed should do it."