The Ship Who Saved the Worlds

by Anne McCaffrey

  "Greetings, honored ones," Thunderstorm said. He bowed low, then introduced himself, his assistants, and Sunset. "As always, we are pleased to have you here, Fisman. To what do we owe the pleasure?"

  So these were humans! Sunset thought, very excited. The tallest alien, whose V-shaped torso lacked mammary protuberances, meaning that it was a male, grinned, meaning the corners of its mouth lifted, but the lip did not part in the center. What hair it had was mixed black and white. Its bare face was a narrow wedge, point down. Its mouth showed flat, white teeth like those of a rodent. He wore a smooth, slightly shiny tunic over thin covers that concealed his abdomen and limbs. Around his neck was a chain bearing many strange devices, among them a curly piece of metal with a sharpened point mounted at a perpendicular angle on a short stick, a bulbous construction mainly consisting of white glass with a shiny gray metal screw-shaped end, and a rectangular plate with characters on it in the human tongue. Sunset leaned a little closer to read it, and jumped back when the tall male made an impatient sign with his manipulative extremity—his hand.

  "It's Bisman, damn it, Thunder, but after all these years I ought to know you still can't say your b's. Sunset, glad to meet you. This is Mirina and Zonzalo Don, brother and sister. My partner and her younger sibling. We bring you more parts, Thunder. Is this the apprentice you promised us?"

  "Yes, sir."

  The younger male approached only a few paces and looked down at Sunset haughtily. "Does he know his stuff?" Zonzalo asked.

  Thunderstorm nudged Sunset forward.

  He answered in the biped's language, carefully rehearsed for this moment. "I've memorized every component in the manuals. I know how to repair each one according to its rite. I obey orders."

  "Very good," Mirina said, with a smile for Sunset. She was slightly wider in frame than her brother, and she had the proper protruberances, both front and side, of a human female. Sunset was glad. He'd been afraid he wouldn't be able to tell, and Thunderstorm had been firm about the etiquette of addressing humans correctly.

  "Thank you, ma'am," Sunset said, which won him another smile from Mirina. Sunset noticed with a shock that the human had eyes of two colors arranged concentrically, with the pupil a round dot in the center. How incredibly strange. Yet, her eyes were the color of loamy soil: a warm, light brown, with a black ring separating the tan from the white; and her teeth, though flat, were very white. Sunset ducked his head to keep from staring. Humans were not so unattractive after all, even though they lacked proper haunches, tails, and wings.

  "Has he taken the Oath?" the younger male asked.

  He had. Thunderstorm had adminstered it himself. Sunset remembered all the grand-sounding phrases. They came to his mind as he stood, waiting as his elders discussed him over his head: obedience, silence, competence, humility, striving towards perfection in all things, and always keeping oriented to the Center of Thelerie.

  "Yes," he piped up, realizing that Zonzalo expected him to say something.

  "Do you know what it means to be a member of the Melange?" Bisman asked Sunset, for the first time looking him square in the eyes. That strange round stare was disconcerting. The younger Thelerie nodded several times to recover himself.

  "I do. Humans and Thelerie together form the basis of trust. Since we are different, we may blend together only those things sacred and invisible such as trust and knowledge. But in that partnership we are indissoluble, and must remain loyal to one another throughout all time. Where our travels may lead us is a test of that trust."

  It was practically quoting the Manuals, but the human didn't seem to mind. He nodded, bobbing his small round head up and down.

  "Good. Well, there's no time like the present. Come on, lad," Bisman said.

  "Now?"

  Bisman glanced at Thunderstorm with an expression that Sunset could not translate. "Yes, now. We haven't got all day. My people are ready to unload and go as soon as we're refueled. Do you want a chance to serve, or not?"

  "Of course I do," Sunset said, realizing he had made a mistake. "I am eager to serve. My skills are ready, and my center is sure."

  That must have been the appropriate response, because the adults turned away from him then and chatted low among themselves. Bisman tapped himself on the manipulative extremity and spoke into his wrist. From the red ship, a crew of bipeds emerged. Part of the hull peeled away to reveal a huge storage bay full of containers.

  At Thunderstorm's signal, many Thelerie came forward with the heavy lifting equipment they brought from the capital city. The human crew unloaded all the goods onto the pad, well away from where the fire would lick out and consume them when it departed. The cargo consisted of spaceship parts, and Sunset recognized all of them. Only the largest one, which had to be hoisted by derrick onto a flat car, he had never seen except in the manuals. It was a primary space drive, probably the first one on Thelerie in many years. Each one was numbered, he had been told, in over a hundred places, on each of its many components. So interested was he that he didn't hear the final transaction between the elders, Thunderstorm on behalf of the Thelerie, and Bisman, the spokeshuman.

  "Come on, lad," Bisman said, coming over to tap Sunset on the wingjoint above his vestigial hand. "As a member of the Melange you've got to prove yourself now. This is your quest. We're looking at another opportunity to build onto your people's space fleet, but it takes time to get to where we're going to get more parts. Can't spend time jawing." He looked at the Thelerie and their wide faces. "You've got plenty of that."

  It seemed to be a joke. At least, all the humans laughed. Sunset attempted to emulate the grin, keeping the centers of his lip together. He followed his new captains toward the ship. Sunset stared at it in fascination, seeing the joints of each part interlocked with the ones on every side. And within, the components working together in harmony like . . . like the Melange. All was as he had studied for the last three years.

  On the side of the great, red ship were hieroglyphs of the human tongue. Sunset couldn't quite make out all of them, but he recognized the word "Central."He extended his wingtip to Thunderstorm, to ask him what they were, and touched no one. Startled, he looked back over his shoulder to see his elder standing at the side of the field, not moving. Sunset opened his great wings and glided back. It was almost the last time he'd be able to do that for a while, so he enjoyed the sensation of air under his pinions.

  "Come on," he urged his mentor.

  "I am not coming, youngster," Thunderstorm said, with a shake of his great head.

  "Why not?"

  The older Thelerie reared back onto his muscular haunches and touched Sunset with a foreclaw. "My reiving days are over, lad. Go with good grace. Come back with honor."

  Chapter Three

  "In ten, everybody. Ten, nine, eight . . ."

  When Carialle's tailfins touched the ground, the passengers and Keff felt hardly a bump.

  " . . . Two, one. Welcome to Cridi. And thank you for flying Air Carialle. Please wait until the captain has turned off the 'fasten seatbelts' sign before debarking."

  Keff, who had been worried about her mental state when the Cridi took control of their flight path, was relieved at her flippancy. He took off his crash straps and stretched.

  "Completely painless," Keff said to Tall Eyebrow, who timidly followed his host's lead. "No wonder your people have such a successful space program. No chance of breakup on reentry."

  "No chance of missing the launch pad, either," Carialle said, activating one of her exterior cameras and tilting it downward. She had landed exactly in the middle of a round pavement surrounded by a pattern of lights laid out on the ground like a snowflake, illumination marching inward from the points.

  Tall Eyebrow saluted Carialle for the safe landing.

  "None of my doing, TE," she said. She noticed that his thin hands were still shaking, and made her frog image appear on the wall opposite him.

  "Don't worry," she signed to him. "They'll be glad to see you."

 
"If only I can be certain," the Frog Prince signed back. He shook his head, a gesture of uncertainty that his people shared with humans.

  "Here comes security," Keff said. "The party's beginning."

  The first sight Keff had of the inhabitants of Tall Eyebrow's homeworld was the tops of helmeted and visored heads sticking out of an open vehicle that was plainly meant as field security. The flattened, molded, bulbous shape of the craft would force any missile, from thrown rocks to laser beams, to bounce upward or outward away from it. If there was anything aloft that looked more like the ancient myth of the flying saucer, Keff had yet to see it. How appropriate when the inhabitants were, verily, little green men. The thin pipes protruding from sockets in the vehicle's upper shell had to be weapons. He couldn't focus quickly enough on the moving craft to estimate whether the pipes shot solid projectiles or some other deterrent.

  "I wish we could tell them we're unarmed," Keff said worriedly.

  "They know," Carialle said, feeling the light sensation fluttering over all her sensors once more, this time lingering at the ends of her neural synapses. "We're being scanned again. Whew! That was thorough. Good thing I'm not ticklish. They probably also know your age, your shoe size, and how much you weigh."

  "If they can do that, then why the heavy armament?" Keff wondered.

  Through her audio monitors Carialle also received the frequency signatures of half a dozen frog devices, plus the quasi-telepathic communications that the system both required and made possible. Since the messages were in high-pitched cheeps and arpeggios, she couldn't understand until the IT got more data on the language of Cridi science, but at least she understood the drill. It was carried out on every planet, spaceport and asteroid in the civilized galaxy.

  "Trust, but verify," Carialle replied.

  Another burst of high-pitched music issued from the speakers, a mathematical sequence that Tall Eyebrow quickly translated for them.

  "Sigma is greater than zero. X equals zero. Y equals zero. XY equals infinity."

  "Very interesting," Carialle said. "To the rest of us folks, it means, 'Come to a stop; don't move; don't attempt to lift off. Any efforts will result in disintegration into uncountable particles. Not that I can move. They've got me held as tightly as a fly in amber."

  The frustration in her voice was not lost on Keff. "Give them a moment to get to know us, Cari. We haven't sent out a herald yet."

  Carialle's Lady Fair image appeared on the wall beside him and made a face. Keff grinned.

  The security vehicle made one more sweep, zooming close to Carialle's dorsal hull, then there was a hash of static as several controller-based broadcasts collided in mid-frequency. Tall Eyebrow looked at Keff and shook his head. He couldn't translate any of that, either. IT's vocabulary base gathered dozens of new syllables and put them on a hold in the datastream.

  From the buildings at the field's edge, a party of frogs emerged and began to make their way across the field. Instead of walking, they glided a few centimeters over most of the beautiful, green sward. Suspicious, Carialle did a scan of her own.

  "Do you realize that these landing pads are almost the only dry land in sight?" she said, showing them a map of her soundings. "That bright verdure covers either mud or marsh, depending on where you step."

  "I bet only the poor folks on this planet live on dry land," Keff said. "Water is riches around here."

  "Then everyone's rich," Carialle said.

  The welcoming committee came within half a kilometer and stopped. Keff counted eight frogs he would classify as dignitaries, and twice that many who were hangers-on, aides, and, to judge by the number of devices hovering in the air near them, reporters. Around them and the ship, the hovering security vehicles described slow circles. The three Ozranians stared at the images of their long-lost cousins, hands flying as they speculated on relationships.

  "They are just like us," Long Hand said, with great interest.

  "That's as far as they're going to come to meet us. You three had better make an appearance," Keff said.

  "If . . ." Long Hand said, hands twitching nervously. She held onto her usual composure. "If they do not disapprove our coming."

  "You won't know until you try," Carialle said, trying to lighten the situation. "But I know that our government would be thrilled beyond words to rediscover a long-lost colony. Go on."

  At once, all three started to make a hasty toilette. Tall Eyebrow divested himself of his beret, sword belt, and cape. Small Spot checked his immaculate hide for dust or smudges. Long Hand dashed for the sonic shower and cleaned herself all over. They resumed their controller units on elastic belts around their chests. Tall Eyebrow already had his on from the game. Keff thought that they did it more for moral support than for use. Once out of the range of Carialle's engines, the ancient amulets would be of little use, even for keeping the skin of water around their bodies. The leader must have sensed Keff's thoughts, for even as he was fitting his long fingers into the five depressions on the bronzed surface of what once had been a lady's belt buckle, he gave a nervous smile.

  "For luck only," he signed, crossing his two first fingers, "since they cannot work here. We must go without globes as well as the protective slip of water. I will return to our people's birthplace standing tall and with dignity, ignoring inconvenience and discomfort."

  Small Spot looked unhappy about his leader's last statement, but he too stood tall, and strode with what dignity he had toward the airlock.

  "If we can do it without losing our pride," Long Hand said, more practically, "I will ask our cousins how to adapt the amulets to their system."

  Carialle opened a tiny panel in her outer hull. A balloon pump took a fifteen cubic centimeter sample of the oxygen, which she ran through a barrage of tests for gas density, humidity, and chemical impurities. It confirmed what she had already guessed.

  "The atmosphere's safe for all of you," she said. "Good, healthy nitrox mix, few harmful impurities, apart from a trace of predictable industrial pollution. More particulates than you three are used to, but not bad. If you want breathing filters, just ask."

  Tall Eyebrow signed a polite refusal. He stared straight ahead of him as Keff moved to the controls for the airlock.

  Keff stayed behind and out of sight as the ramp lowered and grounded with a squish. The Ozranians hung back a moment, reluctant to leave the surroundings that were, if not home, then safe and familiar.

  "Go on," Keff urged them. "I'll be right behind you."

  The amphibioids looked out across the field. Keff tried to picture himself in their place, to be the first to bridge the gap of a thousand years' silence, and was overwhelmed by the urgency of explaining, the enormity of understanding. Keff realized he had forgotten to breathe for a moment. Their feelings must have been shared by the party of dignitaries. The small party of dignitaries had pushed forward ahead of the crowd, and were looking expectantly at the ship's hatch. There was no perceptible physical difference between them and the three Ozran-born Cridi. Seeing no movement, the party surged forward again.

  "It's your turn," Keff said, straightening up. "Are you ready?"

  "No," Tall Eyebrow signed, "but, yes. Come."

  With dignity, the small alien turned and walked out of the main cabin. Long Hand and Small Spot followed his example, straightening their spines and tilting their heads slightly upward. Together, they marched through the corridor and into the airlock. Carialle slid the inner door shut, and the outer door open.

  Keff, right behind them in the shadows, heard shrill cheers as the crowd caught the first glimpse of the three Ozranians in the starship's airlock. In silhouette against the bright daylight outside, Keff could see Tall Eyebrow's knees begin to tremble. Small Spot, overwhelmed by the sound, edged backward until he bumped into Keff's legs.

  "You can do it," he urged them. "Go on. Take that one last step. Just march forward. Count to a hundred. Don't think about anything but the numbers. Go on."

  "One," TE counted out loud in S
tandard. "Two, three, four . . . " The other two marched behind them, out of the airlock, down the ramp, and into the sunshine. The crowd went wild, throwing flowers and sheaves of green plants into the air. Keff stayed behind to watch. He counted their footsteps. A hundred paces took the three visitors about half the way to the party of dignitaries on the edge of the field. There they hesitated, and the Cridi government officials took their cue at once. Dignified but clearly excited, they glided across the swampy ground, to alight in front of Tall Eyebrow and his companions.

  "Go get 'em, frogs! Yeah!" he whispered.

  "I'm all choked up," Carialle said in his ear.

  Keff squinted, bringing the magnifying lens in his left eye to full telescopy, and listened to Carialle's amplified audio. He could see the expressions on the faces of the dignitaries: bemusement, kindness, curiosity, but no hostility. The globe-frogs had come home.

  "Who are you?" signed the leader of the Cridi delegation, an elderly male whose once-smooth skin wrinkled into a million tiny folds around his wide mouth. A narrow cape of ornately braided strips hung to the ground from the nape of his neck. It was held there by a hammered bronze band that stretched across the top of his back and sprouted into filigree coils over his shoulders. "Where do you come from? We have seen the message sent to the beacon, and we do not know what to think."

  Another Cridi, a slender female wearing a slim silver torc with matching bracelets and anklets piped an enthusiastic, "B equals B," and signed, "We agree! Since we received your transmission, all has been a flurry of excitement. Where do you come from?"

  Tall Eyebrow identified himself and his companions. "We return to you from a colony world known as Ozran." The final name emerged as a buzz and a honk.

  "Ozran?" one self-important frog repeated, bellying up to stand before the landing party. Of all the Cridi present, he was the largest: broad, round, and tall. His yellow green skin was mottled, reflecting a choleric nature. "What is this name Ozran?" he peeped indignantly. "Not a Cridi name." Keff chuckled to himself. It wasn't easy for a whistle to sound dignified.