The Ship Who Saved the Worlds

by Anne McCaffrey

  It took every last credit she had to charter a scout craft to Zonzalo's last known location. Lucky thing it was a base the pirates used all the time. She hadn't intended to stay once she had rescued her brother, but face-to-face, the pirates were a truly pathetic lot. Their equipment was a hundred years outdated, but even bad equipment will work if maintained. Their diet was so unbalanced that crew members were going down sick with fragile-bone disease and scurvy, even the ones who weighed 160 kilos. Mirina needed so badly to be needed that when Zonzalo and a younger, much handsomer Aldon Bisman pressed her to stay, she did. Central Worlds had rejected her, but these people wanted her. They'd pay her anything she asked, just to stay. At the time the offer was hard to resist.

  It took two years before she had them whipped into a kind of military order that preserved resources and actually allowed them to build their network outward. She was a good organizer, but for eight years now, it seemed, she'd operated on autopilot. She found it harder every day to break away. The activity kept her from thinking too hard about where she had come from, about Charles, and the horrifying accident that killed him, and what she was doing.

  At long last Mirina was thinking again. She needed to take Zonzalo and leave, cease aiding and abetting criminals. She had become one herself. Little niggles and twinges from her conscience told her that she still owed something to Central Worlds. Even after all the wrong CW had done her, she'd never have met Charles and shipped with him if it wasn't for the brainship program. He had been the single most wonderful thing in her life. An old-fashioned but worldly gentleman, Charles himself would have said it was Mirina's duty to turn herself and the others in, and he'd be right. She shouldn't be here. Not that she ought to try and return to the brain/brawn program: she couldn't. She couldn't even go back to the Central Worlds and try to fit into the mainstream. No job would be safe for her. The authorities undoubtedly had a criminal file on her that would cover a small continent, and she would rather die of torture than be locked up groundside. The Don family would have to ship out on their own, skipping from remote outpost to remote outpost forever. Again the sensation of desperate lack of belonging rose out of her belly and clutched her throat until she gasped, sobbing. Mirina sat up in bed and braced herself, elbows akimbo with hands on her knees, just breathing. She was doing good here, too—she was! The work they had done with the Thelerie was benevolent and worthwhile. Look at the advances the winged ones had made in only a few years! She hated to leave that, but she needed to go away and take Zonzalo with her.

  A good organizer knows how to organize. She lay back on her bunk, and began to take stock of her assets.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Cridi were green, in every way. They were inexperienced, scared witless, and, well, physically resembled the chorus line for a production of the comedy musical Frogs In Space. Keff's natural exuberance and energy were proving to be just shy of what it took to buoy up an entire crew of aliens through their first experience of long-term space travel. Every day brought new anxieties and fears that just proved how quickly a space-going race can forget how it once adapted. He fell into bed at night, completely exhausted.

  Things were slightly better now that they had passed the halfway point. Their passage around the trapped magnetic Oort debris, pooled at the balance point between the Cridi system and its sister sun, when all of Carialle's sensors had gone briefly insane, had caused hysteria among the Cridi. It had taken all Keff's tact and patience to keep the other ship's crew from mutinying against Narrow Leg and diving through the anomaly—fatally—back toward their homeworld. Carialle's suggestion, voiced at thunderous volume over all speakers, that both systems must be of identical galactic mass and weight to hold this particular configuration, lured some of the scientists out of their emotional shells to study the phenomenon of twin systems. Narrow Leg and Tall Eyebrow rallied everyone into the project. Keff spent plenty of time answering questions and supplying telemetry scans for their use. An intelligent people, they understood that to occupy their minds fully would help defy the dark. Yet, bogeys crept back nightly, leaving Keff to buoy their hearts up again in the morning.

  As he staggered out into the main cabin at the beginning of his shift, in the middle of the second week in space, he glimpsed Cridi from the corner of his eye in half a dozen screens, all staring. They relaxed perceptibly when they saw him. Keff deliberately met each pair of eyes in turn, smiling with confidence. They must have been up since the dot of first shift, waiting for him to appear. Tall Eyebrow, Small Spot, Long Hand, and Big Eyes were in the corner of the cabin near the food synthesizer, the only ones who didn't look nervous.

  "I'm not used to this much company," Keff growled under his breath to Carialle. "We've had too many years alone, just the two of us."

  "It won't last forever," the brain reminded him, speaking through his aural implant, the lone communication signal that they kept as a private channel. All the others had been left on open broadcast to the Cridi ship so the amphibioids could monitor what was going on, Carialle was also tapped into the frequencies of both functioning Cores. She kept her frog image on the wall of the CK-963 and on one screen of the Cridi ship in case they needed to ask questions while Keff was busy or asleep. "We're doing a public service for them, and they're out to help us with our mission."

  "But they're still so scared," Keff said, frustrated.

  "They'll get over it once there's something to do."

  "I hope so," Keff said. He sat down at the control console, and let out a huge yawn. "They're wearing me out." On the screen over it, two of Narrow Leg's crew stared out. He smiled at them.

  "Hello, Gap Tooth and Wide Foot."

  "Good mor-ning," they chorused in Standard, faltering only a little over the dipthong.

  "That's very good," Keff said, nodding encouragingly. "Have you been studying the drama videos I sent so you could practice listening to colloquial speech?"

  "Have," the first one said, then fell back on a combination of sign and numeric squeak. "Interesting, times two—times three! Terror, fire, exciting! N is greater than zero tongue trill sounds. Why?"

  Keff stared, baffled. "What do you mean? Which tape were you watching?"

  The other Cridi, Wide Foot, held up a card and pronounced the title with great care as she followed the words with a finger. "Gone With The Wind," she said, and turned puzzled eyes to him.

  "Oh!" Keff smiled, enlightened. "It's a dialect. Trill sounds were sometimes replaced with aspirates in some regional speech patterns on Old Earth."

  "Sounds soft," she said, and gave him a timid smile in return. "I like to he-ah such speech. I may adopt it."

  "Oh, wonderful," Carialle said, much amused. "A frog with an American Southern accent."

  "I think it adds character," Keff said. "I encourage you to experiment," he told Wide Foot.

  "I shall."

  As Tall Eyebrow and his companions had already proved, the Cridi were rapid learners. They absorbed the Standard As a Second Language videos that Carialle dredged out of her memory, and were speaking a form of pidgin by the end of the first week. Keff's own grasp of the Cridi spoken language was increasing every day as a result of answering so many questions. Having no residue of the tongue in his memory, Keff was finding it slower going than the three Ozranians did. Tall Eyebrow was now participating fully in discussions with his long-lost cousins.

  Keff was also accumulating a considerable amount of data for the paper he was beginning to write on the evolution of the Cridi languages from a thousand years ago up to the present day.

  Language instruction was only part of the program that he, Carialle, Narrow Leg, and Tall Eyebrow had worked out to keep the Cridi sane and functioning throughout the voyage. It also included cultural exchange, elementary space travel, survival techniques, and of course, lessons in how to play Myths and Legends. The new Cridi were about evenly split so far on whether or not they liked the concept of the game, but all agreed it helped to pass the time. Cridi video screens weren't
sophisticated enough to produce the quality of holographic images Carialle projected, so they didn't see the same charm in it as the travelers aboard the CK-963. All the Cridi loved her three-D puzzles, which did translate reasonably well.

  Carialle also shared the extensive onboard collection of entertainment tapes. Because of the language barrier, she gave them mostly music. The Cridi adored symphonies, folk music, stage musicals, operetta, plainchant, and whatever else she could winkle out of the nooks and crannies of her memory. During one communication period they sang an improvised cantata in the human fashion for her. The shrill quality of their voices sent Keff to his knees with his hands over his ears, but Carialle was touched.

  "Only a little in return for all your kindness," Big Eyes had said. "With your help, we are learning not to be afraid of the journey—though all of us wonder what we will find at the end."

  Since the Cridi ship ran easily using the remote control manipulation of Core amulets, the crew was able to pursue many activities in the long, empty stretches of space. Narrow Leg had set up a process to manufacture more travel globes. He used the ones Tall Eyebrow had lent them to explore the fifth planet as models, and now the native Cridi had a supply of their own, with plenty of backup units. Tall Eyebrow insisted that part of each day be devoted to learning to use the clear shells, and part for an exercise program to build up the muscles needed to manipulate them easily on a variety of terrains. Though he was aboard the brainship, he monitored exercise periods in both groups of Cridi. He was showing the kind of leadership that had impressed Keff back on the griffins' outpost.

  There had been a certain amount of bickering before they'd left the fifth planet over who would travel in which ship. Keff invited any of the Cridi to fly with him and Carialle who wished to, and inadvertantly started a three-tongued argument. Narrow Leg insisted that there was room in his ship for all the Cridi. Tall Eyebrow claimed pride of place with the Central Worlds pair. Big Eyes wanted to travel with Tall Eyebrow. Narrow Leg demanded that his daughter stay with him. Big Voice couldn't decide which one he wanted to travel on, and demanded a vote of confidence. They appealed to Keff to mediate. While on the surface, all Keff's statements had to pass through Tall Eyebrow's globe-pickup. From there, they were translated into the subtleties of the spoken language over the amulet link to the Cridi, and through sign language to Small Spot and Long Hand. It was a lengthy process, sometimes frustrating, sometimes amusing. In the end, Keff had excused himself and let the Cridi battle it out among themselves.

  The brainship wound up with only four guests: the original Ozran contingent, plus Big Eyes, who shared the second spare bunk with Long Hand. Narrow Leg wasn't happy having his daughter miles away across the cold void, but he had plenty of responsibilities to keep him occupied. This morning, Keff could see the Cridi commander over the shoulder of one of the crew who was plastered to a viewscreen. Narrow Leg was having one of his daily arguments with Big Voice, this time over the travel globes. The stout councillor stood, arms folded, in the bottom half of his globe. He was up to his knees in water, but still trying to maintain his dignity.

  "Why do we do without our amulets?" Big Voice said, in sign and squeak. "I do not like these bubbles. Why must we learn to use them? Technology is so far beyond this already!" Tall Eyebrow automatically turned to translate for Keff in Standard voice and Ozranian sign. Keff sat down, keeping one eye on the screen and one eye on TE. He understood most of this argument. It was an old one.

  "Because the ammonia in the atmosphere could burn your skin, and there's not enough oxygen to sustain you, and you may have other things to think of there than breathing," Narrow Leg said, every gesture filled with impatience. "Because the engines of our host ships have only so much energy, most of which must be saved to launch us back home, not to be used by the Core. I have told you before. And again."

  Tall Eyebrow relayed the answer, and added, "He does not like discomfort. I would give him a mild sample touch of the gas, to show him what he will not believe."

  "It would sting," Keff said, "but you could be right. Prove one point, and he might begin to take your word on others."

  "I will suggest it to Narrow Leg when we can speak alone," Tall Eyebrow said. "But I have another notion. Big Voice," he called, interrupting the argument. The councillor used a flick of power to swivel, and stood facing him.

  "What?" The impatient question came through loud and clear over both Core frequency and speaker.

  "You do not have to learn to use the globe," Tall Eyebrow said, standing up and stretching to the maximum of his great height.

  "I do not?" Big Voice asked, with a shrill squeak that went up almost above human hearing.

  "Not at all," the Ozranian leader said. "You shall gather information for us. You shall remain safe in the ship at all times while the rest of us make our exploration. We will report back to you what we find."

  Big Voice stared and spluttered. "That is not correct! Think of my position. I am a high official of the conclave! I should be in the first rank."

  Tall Eyebrow shrugged his thin shoulders, a gesture borrowed from Keff. "If you cannot use a globe, you cannot precede us. The atmosphere is undoubtedly too dangerous. We would not put you in peril of your life. You are, as you say, a high official."

  The councillor's eyes narrowed.

  "I shall practice," Big Voice said. He glanced at Narrow Leg, whose eyes were wide with amusement. "But only so I may take my rightful place."

  Casually, not hurrying at all, Big Voice twisted his hand and curled his fingers. The upper half of his globe lifted, inverted, and fitted itself onto the lower half. Big Voice crouched inside it and resolutely placed his hands on the inside wall. Narrow Leg retreated a few steps as the councillor drove his globe directly at him, heading out into the corridor and away from the video screen.

  Tall Eyebrow turned away, chuckling, and rejoined the others. "Every step of the way he fights," he said. "He makes me earn my place."

  "You do very well," Keff told him. "I think you're quite a leader. I'd be proud to follow you myself."

  Carialle's deep, musical laugh filled the room, and Keff glanced over at her image on the wall. "You should hear him. He's cursing to himself that TE might make him miss out on any of the adventure. In between grunts, that is."

  "I am afraid," Big Eyes said, and made a gesture of shame. "I was all excited for adventure; now, prudence."

  "It is wise to be afraid, but do not let it paralyze you," Tall Eyebrow signed firmly. He put an arm around her. "You have a healthy body and sharp wits, and the strength of the Core is ours. I may not be a military leader, but I can at least show you how to survive. In terrible conditions we manufactured the globes with which your cousins survive on Sky Clear. You have done that, too. You can learn more. Together we can do better. We can prosper." The young female looked hopeful, encouraging the male to smile. "You teach me more verbal language, I tell you of survival. We exchange as we go."

  "Bravo, TE," Carialle whispered over the mastoid implant to Keff.

  Big Eyes was obviously impressed, by the way she gazed at Tall Eyebrow— and other Cridi were listening. Clearly they were nodding wisely to one another, they found encouragement in the Ozranian leader's words.

  "I hope you teach me more than that," the female said at last, with a coy look up under her eyelids. Tall Eyebrow looked pleased and a little flustered.

  "They don't need us at all," Keff murmured.

  In spite of the discomfort of diminished privacy, Keff found the enforced closeness provided him with wonderful opportunities to observe unique sociological interaction. Once the Cridi began to relax, they reverted to their normal personalities.

  Tall Eyebrow and the other two Ozranians were also affected by the lack of privacy. TE seemed torn between his desire to spend every waking moment with Big Eyes, and his need to get away by himself for a while.

  "It is too crowded," he had said wistfully to Keff in an unguarded moment. Keff sympathized.

&nb
sp; Wisely, the young female perceived that not everyone had grown up in a household crowded with dozens of children and other relatives, and left TE several times a day to do other things. She made friends with Long Hand, too. From the occasional eavesdrop, Keff discovered that Big Eyes was asking about life on Ozran. The facts were hard for someone brought up amid plenty and water, but to her credit, the Cridi councillor didn't blanch. She and the elder female also had numerous close conversations in the corner of the large cabin, glancing at the screens showing the Cridi in the other ship and giggling behind their palms. Big Eyes seemed to enjoy Long Hand's sardonic sense of humor.

  Some funny moments were universally shared. Big Voice had appointed himself Communications Officer. He solicited messages every day from both ships, and spent about an hour broadcasting back towards Cridi. The transmissions were more amusing than useful. Carialle brought in the frequency so she and Keff could enjoy the pompous administrator practicing self-aggrandizement before the video pickup. Tall Eyebrow and the others watched with interest the first two days. Thereafter they turned off the sound and made rude signs among themselves. Big Voice's tenth transmission made especially good comedy.