The Ship Who Saved the Worlds

by Anne McCaffrey

  "Further advancement has been made. I have observed constellations as mapped by our ancestors in their star charts. I am pleased to let the Council and the constituency of Cridi know that those charts are accurate!"

  "Oh, no!" Big Eyes signed merrily, waving her hands at the 3-D image. "Get away."

  "I am pleased that he has allowed the poor navigators to trust those maps that have been in place for a thousand years," Long Hand gestured, with a sly look in her eyes.

  "Important message from our ship commander, Narrow Leg," Big Voice continued, picking up a minute square of white. "We have approached and passed halfway point of journey, and expect to arrive at our destination soon. This is confirmed by our human companions, Keff and Carialle"—he made the sign of the 'Watcher Within the Walls'—"We are grateful for their input, since they confirm what it is that we learn."

  "That's not exactly what you said," Keff said to Carialle. "You told Narrow Leg where we are, and he checked it." Her frog image on the wall made much the same throwing-away gesture that Big Eyes had.

  "Let him tell their press whatever he wants," she said. "If it will help public relations, I don't care what he says. Do you think any of them kept listening past the first five minutes?"

  "I doubt it," Keff said, sitting down with a thump on the bench of his Rotoflex exercise machine at a good remove from Big Voice's screen. "I don't know why Narrow Leg lets him blather on like that."

  The commander, whose face was visible on the screen nearest Keff's bench, must have heard his last remark.

  "It serves to unite," the old one said, his wrinkled, pistachio-colored face creasing in a friendly grimace. "It does him no harm, because others have too much tact to tell him he is silly."

  "Aren't you afraid all that nonsense will begin to pall? You don't want the folks back home to lose interest in what you're doing because he"—Keff tilted his head toward the main screen—"bores them to death."

  Narrow Leg shook his head. "He is too shrewd to allow himself to be boring. And he is not. Every day he finds a new way to make himself ridiculous. It does not matter what the media say, so long as they say something with one's name in it. That is what Big Voice thinks. Most importantly, it keeps our minds off what we are doing. If allowed to brood, I think my folk would go mad. That is why I like your games and puzzles and lessons."

  "Thank you," Carialle said. "I wish you'd say that to our administration. They think we are already mad for playing games on long flights."

  "I shall," the old one said, with a courtly nod, "at the first available opportunity. How is our progress?"

  "Very good," Carialle said. "I was right that the gravity well between the twin systems would destroy the ion trail where it passed closest, but now that we're past it, I'm seeing plenty. I'm also getting traces of low-power radio transmissions from the twin system."

  The old one cocked his head to one side and looked pleased. "The fourth planet, yes?"

  "Yes. With your people's extensive history of space travel I'm surprised you never explored in the system closest to your own, in spite of the gravity well."

  "We did," Narrow Leg said, the pixels in his image updating in waves as he swiveled toward his own computer. "We knew of civilization. Our explorers had images of artifacts, buildings—perhaps houses. Large. See here, now." He waved a hand, and the image that was in front of him superimposed itself on the communication screen between him and Keff. In the Cridi format the view was hard to make out, but on the sides of a rocky, steep gorge, the brawn could make out structures that were clearly artificial.

  "Well, I'll be damned," he said, his eyebrows creeping upward into his hairline. "Then why didn't your people ever land there?"

  "Already inhabited," the Cridi captain said simply, returning to the screen. "We wished planets for colonization, so we did not pay attention to ones with intelligent life. It was remiss of us," he added grimly. "We should have."

  Carialle's frog image looked thoughtful. "Why didn't you make contact with them? They're your nearest neighbors."

  Narrow Leg shook his head. "Crude. Too primitive. We knew they were too far behind us to share civilization. Someday, we thought."

  Keff snorted. "Well, it looks like they evolved in a hurry."

  "If they're our pirates," Carialle said, warningly. "We might just be following the gang from base to base. Narrow Leg, I'd like to copy your data and send it with ours to the CenCom when we transmit next."

  "My honor," the captain said, bowing.

  "Just a moment!" Big Voice came up behind the commander. While the three of them had been chatting, the councillor had finished his daily tirade. Clearly he had overheard or overseen the last exchange. "I wish to send such a message to your Central Committee. Today!"

  "You can't," Keff said, quickly. He glanced at Carialle's frog image, which spread its big mouth in dismay. He knew they shared the same thought. They didn't want to alert the CenCom just yet that they were flying a joint mission with the Cridi. They had already disobeyed a direct order to return. The next time they made contact with CW there'd be a hue and cry out after them, so they'd better have the proof they needed in hand.

  Big Voice looked upset. "Why not? You have communication frequencies as we do."

  Carialle's frog image suddenly filled the screens. "Honored councillor," she said, waiting while the IT program filtered her Standard speech into Cridi voice-language, "it would confuse matters for our diplomats. Keff and I are the only members of the Central Worlds with a working knowledge of your language. There is no translator in the CenCom who would be able to appreciate your most important words."

  "Ah, I see," Big Voice said, leaning back with his long, spidery hands propped proudly on his chest. "Naturally not. I must wait until I may see them face-to-face—which I hope will not be long."

  "No," Keff said. "It'll be as soon as we can make it."

  Big Voice left, looking very satisfied.

  "Well handled," Narrow Leg signed to them, with very small motions obscured from the rest of the room.

  Carialle's hand signs were equally discreet. "We have our bores, too."

  A soft sound woke Keff in his cabin. He opened his eyes to the darkness.

  "Yes? Who's there?"

  "Keff?" Carialle's voice came very softly from his aural implant. "Come on forward. I'm getting clearer transmissions from Planet Four. I think you want to hear these."

  Keff pulled on a pair of exercise pants and padded out into the cabin. A soft hum, the sound of the frogs breathing, came from behind the closed room across the corridor. Carialle illuminated a faint line of blue along the wall to guide him. He slid into his chair.

  "We just came into range where I could pick up those faint radio signals intact. I think it's telephone conversations, words and pictures."

  "Really?" Keff asked, interested enough to wake up almost all the way. "And are they the griffins?"

  "See for yourself."

  "Paydirt!" Keff exclaimed in an excited hiss. He glanced over his shoulder to see if the Cridi had heard him. He turned back for another good look.

  In the tank in front of him, a long, narrow image took shape. The being pictured was indeed a griffin. It was younger and slighter than any of the brutes the team had left behind in the Cridi system. It put the tips of its wing-claws together under its chin in a sort of namaste, then let the wings flip around to its back.

  "Freihur," it said, the slit upper lip opening and closing breathily. "Solahiaforn. Zsihivonachaella." A burst of static broke up the picture, and it reformed around the speaker saying, " . . . Volpachur."

  "You're right," Keff said. "It does sound like half a telephone conversation. I'm surprised you haven't picked up any mass communication channels."

  "Maybe they don't have any," Carialle said. "But isn't this better?"

  "A thousand times," Keff said, feeling for the keypad to activate IT. The server controlling the translation program beeped softly to tell him it was operating. "I might be able to separat
e out some appropriate phrases between now and our arrival. Starting with 'hello,' if that's what that first word meant. 'Freihur,'" he said, trying it out with a trill of his tongue. "How close are we?"

  "About five days," Carialle said. " . . . Keff, I feel uneasy."

  He felt a twinge of anxiety for her, and gazed at her pillar as if it might give him some clue how to help her. "I know how much of a strain this is on you, personally. You know I'm for you, all the way. I simply don't know how much I can help, if we run into—into anybody."

  Carialle sighed. "I don't know how I'll react. But thank you for your support. This is the best way to lay my personal demons."

  "You're right," Keff said, settling himself more comfortably in front of the screen. "And with this I now stand a better chance of cooperation. This is what I was wishing for after the Cridi froze those griffins. How bad is the gain? Can you get me some more?"

  "Cued up and waiting for you, Sir Knight," Carialle said, feeling better in the face of Keff's enthusiasm.

  At the beginning of day shift, Carialle watched the Cridi on the other ship reacting with surprise to seeing Keff already up before them. Narrow Leg immediately intuited that something important was afoot.

  "What is new?" he asked, in Standard, making his way to the screen nearest the console.

  "Good morning, captain," Keff said, still staring at the griffin on the screen, a delicate, sable-furred one with a chip on its front left fang. He swiveled toward the screen. "Language lessons."

  "The beasts!" Narrow Leg exclaimed, his hands flying.

  "We're close enough to pick up their low-power transmissions," Carialle said, forwarding receiver data to the Cridi technical operator. "I think it's a tower-based, amplitude-modulated system."

  "Indeed? The monsters have come far," the Cridi captain said. "No electronics were reported many years past."

  "How long?" Keff asked. "My own species went from wood stoves to satellite technology in the same generation."

  The Cridi opened his large mouth wide, then closed it. "I have forgotten that progress moves tenfold, and tenfold again. It is long since my people discovered non-motor engines."

  "Mine, too," Keff said. "It looks like these people made their leap much more recently."

  "Have done so without morals," the Cridi said, almost dismissively. "We shall have much to say to them on that subject."

  Keff held up his hands. "Slow down a little, Narrow Leg. I've barely learned how to say 'Greetings,' in their language. It is going to take time."

  "We shall help you," Narrow Leg said, resolutely. "It is better to work on a project that will advance our understanding than spend time playing puzzles." He shot an impatient glance at his crew, who were now involved in an interactive game with the brainship.

  "I'll take care of that," Carialle said cheerfully. She reached into her peripherals for her game function and clicked it off. Screens all over the Cridi ship went blank, and she heard outraged peeps. Disappointed crew members, suddenly noticing that their captain's eye was upon them, immediately tried to look busy.

  "I'll tight-beam them all the linguistic data we have so far," she said.

  "Think of it as a new kind of game," Keff said, more lightly than he felt. "We're stalking the wild syntax in its lair."

  "No. It is rather another weapon in our hand," the Cridi captain said. "This is the confirmation we have sought, after all: that the marauders are here. That is where retribution begins."

  "No!" Carialle interrupted him, with a touch of alarm. "Captain, we are investigating this system to gather information, not start an interstellar war. We're not armed."

  "No, you are not, but we are."

  "With respect, Captain, we must—and will—stand between you and the griffins if you start a conflict."

  "Even though yours have also died at their hands." The old male made it a statement instead of a question.

  Keff gulped, the memory of the dead on the asteroid clear in his mind. "That only makes what we have to do that much harder, Narrow Leg. That is the unhappy part of diplomacy."

  "In the end such an outcome can only be a tragedy," Narrow Leg said, with a sudden expression of sympathy. "I shall not be the one to sacrifice our friendship. We will help you."

  The radio transmissions from the griffin homeworld were primitive and infrequent, but as the two ships neared it, Carialle had no trouble capturing and translating the broadcasts into pictures and sound.

  The files they'd gotten from the pirate base computer were put to one side. To Keff and IT those had been no help at all. The overlay of narration in musical horn-call on the astrogation file was unreliable as a point of comparison between the two languages. Where Central Worlds had long commentary on a particular system, there might be a single phrase or two of description in griffin. On a star-chart dismissed by the CW astrogators in four sentences as unimportant, Keff listened to a three-minute horn solo that sounded beautiful, but meant nothing to IT. He couldn't separate the language into words. Here and there, a word in the griffin speech sounded like the CW name for a system: "Farkash," for "Barkus," and so on. The difference was due to the griffin facial physiognomy. Keff wondered what had happened to the human computer operator who had told them how to use the system and pronounced some of the names for them.

  In the live transmissions from the planet, Keff saw the creatures speaking in colloquial dialect. After several hours of listening to tape after tape, he was delighted to begin to discern patterns. Each of the messages began with the same word or words of greeting: "Freihur." Keff had his "hello."

  "This is my Rosetta stone," he told Tall Eyebrow, with a flourish. "This is the way we can begin to understand the language."

  The Frog Prince's eyes shone. He and Big Eyes sat with Keff while he was trying to make some sense out of the griffin tapes during that first day. They imitated the phrases they heard, only two or three octaves higher, flutes playing alongside trombones and trumpets. Keff thought they had reasonably good ears, but it was only music to them. They still lacked any concept of meaning. The Cridi were better at concrete, spatial concepts, rather than abstract, but they retained perfectly what he told them. IT began to pick out sentence patterns, even separating word roots where they were repeated in different combinations. Carialle now had thousands of "telephone conversations" from which Keff could work. He was steadily gleaning vocabulary, where the caller occasionally showed an object to his or her callee. None of it was much help; he doubted he'd have occasion to refer to plants, babies, mixing bowls, or necklaces in a diplomatic conversation, but the use of noun and pronoun patterns was useful. Some of the extra memory that the CW had thoughtfully provided Carialle for the diplomatic mission was coming in very handy. They'd have to see what they could do about keeping it when they returned to base.

  Keff stayed at the console, still working on the language question when the Cridi went off for baths and bed. He half-listened to the excited chirps of conversation coming from the spare cabin as the frogs discussed the day's discovery. Soon, the noise died away, and he glimpsed the light go out just before the cabin door slid shut.

  He was concerned about what he would find when they made orbit, or landed on the griffin homeworld. Would they have to run for their lives? Were they blundering blindly into a trap? And how would the Cridi react? It would be the end of his and Carialle's careers if they deliberately put the elements together for an interstellar conflict.

  And he was concerned about Carialle's state of mind. Their duties as hosts and teachers had taken up much of the personal time they usually spent together. For the first time in years he couldn't guess what she was thinking.

  Her determination to pursue the hunt had led her to concentrate most of her attention on it. Her theory that the griffin ship was transiting frequently between the Cridi system and the one next door was borne out by the discovery of the wispy threads of many ion trails. They were delicate, hard to see, and remarkably easy to overshoot. Carialle did a lot of backtracki
ng when the thin traces broke and drifted away where they'd been disturbed by anomalies such as ion storms or comets. Picking up the aud/vid broadcasts and confirming that they were heading for the griffin stronghold should have made her relax, but she seemed more concentrated than ever. Multiplexing astrogation, running the ship, playing M&L with the Cridi, maintaining lines of communication and acting as data librarian pulled her attention in a dozen directions at once. Keff worried that in the midst of it all she was thinking too hard about what lay ahead. What if this turned out to be another dry hole in her search for the beings that once threatened her life and sanity? Where would they go next? The team was risking censure and worse by CenCom, and Maxwell-Corey in particular, by ignoring their orders, and yet they couldn't stay off-line forever. Sooner or later they had to communicate, no matter what that brought in return. True, circumstances had changed a routine mission into an emergency, but would the IG see it that way? M-C already doubted the soundness of Carialle's emotions, enough to jeopardize his own position by rigging her with a telltale missile.

  Keff felt his face grow hot, and realized he was still just as mad about M-C's impossible gall as he had been when the message probe had launched. He stood up from the console, commanding IT to save his last hour's progress. Then, he plunked himself down on his exercise bench and started pulling on the weight bars until he began to breathe in rhythm. Soon, the resentment was driven out by the simple beat of the weights clapping together. The tension melted away, replaced by the honest warmth of a good workout. Eyes closed, he smiled at the ceiling.

  "Penny for them," Carialle's voice said.

  He opened his eyes, but continued to haul on the pulleys. "I was just thinking we haven't talked in a long time. Just the two of us."

  "I've been missing that, too," she said, regretfully. "It takes a lot out of a girl, playing hostess nonstop."

  "Same here," Keff said, giving one last massive flex of his shoulders that took all the tension out of the part of his back between the scapulae, and let the weights down gently. "Just now I'm tempted to agree with the IG's assessment that we're nuts."