by David Brin
He overheard Sara utter buzzing glottal stops to frame a strange GalSix term. One seldom heard, except in tones of muted awe.
Zang.
Despite his handicap, Emerson abruptly knew what advice Gillian was receiving from the young Jijoan mathematician. He shivered. Of all the chances taken by Streaker’s crew, none was like this. Even daring the throat of a newly roused transfer point might have been better. Just thinking about it provoked a reply from some recess of his sundered brain. Precious as a jewel, a single word glittered hot and hopeless.
Desperation …
It didn’t take long for Streaker’s tactic to be noticed.
The Jophur enemy — just twenty paktaars away — began slewing at once, shedding pseudovelocity to intercept the Earthship’s new course.
A crowd of others lay even nearer at hand.
Blue glimmers represented frail harvesting machines — Emerson had seen graphic images and recognized the gossamer sails. By now half the luckless convoy were already consumed by rapidly expanding solar storms. The rest gathered light frantically, pulsing with inadequate engines, struggling to find refuge at the older transfer point.
Among those frail sparks, four bright yellow dots had been cruising imperviously, speeding to assist some of the beleaguered mechanicals. But this effort was disrupted by Streaker’s sudden, hard turn.
Two of the yellow glows continued their rescue efforts, darting from one harvester to the next, plucking a glittering nucleus unit out of the swelling flames and leaving the broad sail to burn.
A third yellow dot swung toward the Jophur ship.
The last one moved to confront Streaker.
Everyone in the Plotting Room stopped what they were doing when a shrill, crackling sound erupted over the comm speakers. Though Emerson had lost function in his normal speech centers, his ears worked fine, and he could tell at once that it was unlike any Galactic language — or wolfling tongue — he had ever heard.
The noise sounded bellicose, nervous, and angry.
The Niss hologram shivered with each staccato burst of screeching pops. Dolphins slashed their flukes, loosing unhappy moans. Sara covered her ears and closed her eyes.
But Gillian Baskin spoke calmly, soothing her companions with a wry tone of voice. In moments, chirps of dolphin laughter filled the chamber. Sara grinned, lowering her hands, and even the Niss straightened its mesh of jagged lines.
Emerson burned inside, wishing he could know what Gillian had said — what well-timed humor swiftly roused her crewmates from their alarmed funk. But all he made out were “wah-wah” sounds, nearly as foreign as those sent by a different order of life.
The Niss Machine made rasping noises of its own. Emerson guessed it must be trying to communicate with the yellow dot. Or rather, what the dot represented … one of those legendary, semifluid globes that served as “ships” for mighty, cryptic hydrogen breathers. He recalled being warned repeatedly, back in training, to avoid all contact with the unpredictable Zang. Even the Tymbrimi curbed their rash natures when it came to such deadly enigmas. If this particular Zang perceived Streaker as a threat — or if it were merely touchy at the moment — any chance of survival was practically nil. The Earthship’s fragments would soon join the well-cooked atoms of Izmunuti’s seething atmosphere.
Soon, long-range scans revealed the face of the unknown. An image wavered at highest magnification, refracted by curling knots of stormy plasma heat, revealing a vaguely spherical object with flanks that rippled eerily. The effect didn’t remind Emerson of a soap bubble as much as a tremendous gobbet of quivering grease, surrounded by dense evaporative haze.
A small bulge distended outward from the parent body as he watched. It separated and seemed briefly to float, glistening, alongside.
The detached blob abruptly exploded.
From the actinic fireball a needle of blazing light issued straight toward Streaker!
Klaxons erupted warnings in both the bridge and Plotting Room. The spatial chart revealed a slender line, departing the yellow emblem to spear rapidly across a distance as wide as Earth’s orbit. As a weapon, it was unlike any Emerson had seen.
He braced for annihilation …
… only to resume breathing when the destructive ray passed just ahead of Streaker’s bow.
Lieutenant Tsh’t commented wryly.
As warning shots go,
(Acts speak much louder than words!)
That was a doozy.
While Emerson labored to make sense of her Trinary haiku, the door of the Plotting Room hissed open and three figures slipped inside. One was a shaggy biped, nearly as tall as a dolphin is long, with a spiky backbone and flapping folds of scaly skin under his chin. Two pale, shambling forms followed, knuckle-walking like protochimpanzees, with big round heads and chameleon eyes that tried to stare in all directions at once. Emerson had seen hoons and glavers before, so he spared their entrance little thought. Everyone was watching Gillian and Sara exchange whispers as tension built.
No order was given to turn aside. Sara’s lips pressed grimly, and Emerson understood. At this point, they were committed. The second transfer point was no longer an option. Its dubious refuge could not be reached now before the Jophur got there first. Nor could Streaker flee toward deep space, or try her luck on one of the varied levels of hyperspace. The dreadnought’s engines — the best affordable by a wealthy clan — could outrun poor Streaker in any long chase.
The Zang did not have to destroy the Earthship. They need only ignore her, leaving the filthy oxygen breathers to settle their squabbles among themselves.
Perhaps that might have happened … or else the orb-ship might have finished them off with another volley. Except that something else happened then, taking Emerson completely off guard.
The Niss hologram popped into place near the tall hoon — Alvin was the youngster’s name, Emerson recalled — and then drifted lower, toward the bewildered glavers. Mewling with animallike trepidation, they quailed back from the floating mesh of spiral curves … until the Niss began emitting a noisome racket. The same that had come over the loudspeakers minutes ago.
Blinking rapidly, the pair of glavers began reflexively swaying. Emerson could swear they seemed just as surprised as he was, and twice as frightened. Yet, they must have found the clamor somehow compelling, for soon they began responding with cries of their own — at first muted and uncertain, then with increasing force and vigor.
To the crew, it came as a rude shock. The master-at-arms — a burly male dolphin with mottled flanks — sent his six-legged walker stomping toward the beasts, intent on clearing the room. But Gillian countermanded the move, watching with enthralled interest.
Sara clapped her hands, uttering a satisfied oath, as if she had hoped for something like this.
On the face of the young hoon, surprise gave way to realization. A subdued, rolling sound escaped Alvin’s vibrating throat sac. Emerson made out a single phrase—
“… the legend …”
— but its significance was slippery, elusive. Concentrating hard, he almost pinned down a meaning before it was lost amid resumed howls from the loudspeakers. More caterwauled threats beamed by the Zang, objecting to Streaker’s rapid approach.
At long range, he saw the great globule pulsate menacingly. Another liquid bulge began separating from the main body, bigger than the first, already glowing with angry heat.
The glavers clamored louder. They seemed different from the ones he had seen back on Jijo, which always behaved like grunting beasts. Now Emerson saw something new. A light. A knowing. The impression of a task long deferred, now being performed at last.
The Zang globe rippled. Its rasping threats merged with the glaver bedlam, forming a turbulent pas de deux. Meanwhile, the new bud fully detached from its flank, pulsating with barely constrained wrath.
This one might not be a warning shot.
Rety
I GUESS THERE’S MORE TO USING ONE OF THESE transfer point things than
I thought.”
Rety meant her words as a peace offering. A rare admission of fault. But Dwer wasn’t going to let her off that easy.
“I can’t believe you thought a couple of savages could just go zooming about the heavens like star gods. This was your plan? To grab a wrecked ship, still dripping seaweed from the dross piles of the Great Midden, and ride along while it falls into a hole in space?”
For once, Rety quashed her normal, fiery response. True, she had never invited Dwer to join her aboard her hijacked vessel in the first place. Nor was he offering any bright ideas about what to do with a million-year-old hulk that could barely hold air, let alone fly.
Still, she kind of understood why he was upset. With death staring him in the face, the Slopie could be expected to get a bit testy.
“When Besh and Rann talked about it, they made it sound simple. You just aim your ship to dive inside—”
Dwer snorted. “Yeah, well you just said a mouthful there, Rety. Aim into a transfer point? Did you ever think how many generations it took our ancestors to learn how to pull that off? A trick we’ve got to figure out in just a midura or two?”
This time, Rety didn’t have to reply. Little yee snaked his long neck from her belt pouch, reaching out to nip Dwer’s arm.
“Hey!” he shouted, drawing back.
“see?” the little urs chided in a lisping voice, “no good come from snip-snapping each other, use midura to study! or just complain till you die.”
Dwer rubbed a three-sided weal, glaring at the miniature male. But yee’s teeth had left the skin unbroken. Any Jijoan human knew enough about urrish bites to recognize when one was just a warning.
“All right then,” he muttered to Rety. “You’re the apprentice star god. Talk that smug computer of yours into saving us.”
Rety sighed. In the wilderness back home, Dwer had always been the one with clever solutions to every problem, never at a loss. She liked him better that way, not cowed by the mere fact that he was trapped in a metal coffin, hurtling toward crushing death and ruin. I hope this don’t mean I’m gonna have to nursemaid him all the way across space to some civilized world. When we’re all set up — with nice apart’mints and slave machines doin’ anything we want — he sure is gonna owe me!
Rety squatted before the little black box Gillian Baskin had given her aboard the Streaker — a teaching unit programmed for very young human children. It functioned well at its intended purpose — explaining the basics of modern society to a wild girl from the hicks of Jijo. To her surprise, she had even started picking up the basics of reading and writing. But when it came to instructing them how to pilot a starship … well, that was another matter.
“Tutor,” she said.
A tiny cubic hologram appeared just above the box, showing a pudgy male face — with a pencil mustache and a cheery smile.
“Well, hello again! Have we been keeping our spirits up? Tried any of those games I taught you? Remember, it’s important to stay busy-busy and think positive until help arrives!”
Rety lashed with her left foot, but it passed through the face without touching anything solid.
“Look, you. I told ya there’s nobody gonna come help us, even if you did get out a distress call, which I doubt, since the dolphins only fixed the parts they needed to, to make this tub fly.”
The hologram pursed simulated lips, disapproving of Rety’s attitude.
“Well, that’s no excuse for pessimism! Remember, whenever we’re in a rough spot, it is much better to seek ways of turning adversity into opportunity! So why don’t we—”
“Why don’t we go back to talking about how we’ll control this here piece of dross,” Rety interrupted. “I already asked you for lessons how to steer it through the t-point just ahead. Let’s get on with it!”
The tutor frowned.
“As I tried to explain before, Rety, this vessel is in no condition to attempt an interspatial transfer at this time. Navigation systems are minimal and incapable of probing the nexus ahead for information about thread status. The drive is balky and seems only capable of operating at full thrust, or not at all. It may simply give up the next time we turn it on. The supervisory computer has degraded to mentation level six. That is below what’s normally needed to calculate hyperspatial tube trajectories. For all of these reasons, attempting to cross the transfer point is simply out of the question.”
“But there’s no place else to go! The Jophur battleship was dragging us there when it flung us loose. You already said we don’t have the engine juice to break away before falling in. So we got nothin’ to lose by trying!”
The tutor shook its simulated head.
“Standard wisdom dictates that any maneuver we tried now would only make it harder for friends/relatives/parents to find you—”
This time, Rety flared.
“How many times do I gotta tell you, no one’s coming for us! Nobody knows we’re here. Nobody would care, if they knew. And nobody could reach us if they cared!”
The teaching unit looked perplexed. Its ersatz gaze turned toward Dwer, who looked more adult with his week-old stubble. Of course, that irritated Rety even more.
“Is this true, sir? There is no help within reach?”
Dwer nodded. Though he too had spent time aboard Streaker, he never found it easy speaking to a ghost.
“Well then,” the tutor replied. “I suppose there is just one thing to do.”
Rety sighed relief. At last the jeekee thing was going to start getting practical.
“I must withdraw and get back to work talking to the ship’s computer, no matter what state it is in. I am not designed or programmed for this kind of work, but it is of utmost importance to try harder.”
“Right!” Rety murmured.
“Indeed. Somehow we must find a way to boost power to communications systems, and get out a stronger message for help!”
Rety bolted to her feet.
“What? Didn’t you hear me, you pile o’ glaver dreck? I just said—”
“Don’t worry while I am out of touch. Try to be brave. I’ll be back just as soon as I can!”
With that, the little cube vanished, leaving Rety shaking, frustrated, and angry.
It didn’t help that old Dwer broke up, laughing. He guffawed, hissing and snorting a bit like an urs. Since nothing funny had happened, she figured he must be doing it out of spite. Or else this might be another example of that thing called irony people sometimes talked about when they wanted an excuse for acting stupid.
I’ll slap some irony across your jeekee head, Dwer, if you don’t shut up.
But he was bigger and stronger … and he had saved her life at least three times in the past few months. So Rety just clenched her fists instead, waiting till he finally stopped chuckling and wiped tears from his eyes.
The tutor remained silent for a long time, leaving both human castaways with no way to deal with the ship on their own.
There were makeshift controls, left in place by Streaker’s dolphin crew when they had resurrected this ancient Buyur hulk from a pile of discarded spacecraft on Jijo’s sea bottom. Mysterious boxes had been spliced by cable to the hulk’s control circuits, programmed to send it erupting skyward along with a swarm of other revived decoys, confusing Jophur instruments and masking Streaker’s breakout attempt. But since the dolphins had never expected stowaways, there were only minimal buttons and dials. Without the tutor, there’d be no chance of making the ship budge from its current unguided plummet.
Lacking anything better to do, Rety and Dwer went forward and stared ahead through the bow windows, pitted from immersion in the Great Midden for half a million years. Together, they tried to spot the mysterious “spinning hole in space” that Jijo’s fallen races still recalled in sagas about ancestral days — the mighty doorway each sneakship passed through when it brought a new wave of refugee-settlers to a forbidden world in a fallow galaxy.
At first, Rety saw nothing special in the glittering starscape. The
n Dwer pointed.
“Over there. See? The Frog is all bent out of shape.”
Rety had grown up amid a primitive tribe, hiding in a grubby wilderness without even the rough comforts of Dwer’s homeland, the Slope. Living in crude huts, with just campfires to ward off chill and darkness, she had constellations overhead nearly every night of her life. But while her cousins made up elaborate hunters’ tales about those twinkling patterns, her only interest lay in their practical use as signposts, pointing the westward path she might someday use to escape her wretched clan.
Dwer, on the other hand, was chief scout of the Commons of Jijo, trained to know every quirk of the sky — from which the Six Races always expected doom and judgment to arrive. He would notice if something was out of place.
“I don’t see …” She peered toward the cluster of glimmering pinpoints he indicated. “Oh! Some of the stars … they’re clumped in a circle and—”
“And there’s nothing inside,” he finished for her. “Nothing at all.”
They stared silently for a while. Rety couldn’t help comparing the disklike blackness to a predator’s open maw, looming rapidly to swallow the ship and all its contents.
“The stars seem t’be smearing out around it,” she added.
Dwer nodded, making hoonish umbling sounds.
“Hr-rm. My sister called this thing a sort of twist in the universe, where space gets all wound up in knots.”
Rety sniffed.
“Space is empty, dummy. I learned that back when I lived with the Daniks, in their underground station. There’s nothin’ out here to get twisted.”
“Fine. Then you explain what we’re about to fall into.”
Little yee chose to speak up then.
“no problem to explain, big man-boy.
“what is life?
“is going from one hole to another, then another!
“is better this way. go in! yee will sniff good burrow for us.
“good, comfy burrow is happiness.”
Dwer glanced sourly at the urrish male, but Rety smiled and stroked yee’s tiny head.