by Timothy Zahn
Roman cocked his head slightly to the side. “In that case, Commander, make sure our guard doesn’t go down.”
Trent held his gaze a second longer, then turned back to his displays without another word. Reaching again to his own controls, Roman turned one of the telescope cameras onto the space horse, keying it to track with the meteor’s projected intercept point. Trent’s paranoia aside, he had no doubt as to what the space horse wanted the rock for…and like the space horse itself, it was something he very much wanted to see. The display shifted slightly as the intercept vector was updated, came to rest on one of the sensory clusters: eight impressively colored organs, each a few square meters in area, grouped around a large expanse of otherwise unremarkable gray skin.
For a moment nothing happened…and then, without warning, all the organs darkened in color and the blank central region abruptly split open, its edges ridging upward in an odd puckering sort of motion. From off-camera the meteor appeared, to drop neatly into the opening. The edges smoothed down, the split vanished, and the organs resumed their original colors.
“Secure from alert,” Roman ordered, and as the trilling was silenced he looked over at Trent. The other’s back was stiff, angry looking. Probably had hoped the Tampies really were attacking the Dryden.
Had hoped to have his prejudices justified.
“I’d like you to run a complete analysis on the event we’ve just recorded, Commander,” Roman said into the silence. “Concentrate on the meteor movements—vector changes, interaction with local gravitational gradients, and so on. There’s a great deal we don’t know about space horse telekinesis, and it’s a blank area we very much need to get filled in.”
Some of the tension went out of Trent’s back. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I’ll get the programs set up right away.”
The tension level in the bridge faded noticeably, and Roman permitted himself a moment of satisfaction. A smart commander, he’d once been told, never rubbed a subordinate’s nose in an error when it wasn’t absolutely necessary to do so. In this case, it wasn’t.
Trent might be bigoted; but even bigots sometimes needed to save a little face.
Ambassador Pankau returned twenty hours later…with an agreement that was fully as much a charade as Roman had expected it to be.
“The Arachne colonists will be moving their power plant about thirty kilometers further downstream,” Pankau said, handing Roman the tapes and signed papers to be filed into the Dryden’s official records. “Aside from that, they won’t have to give up all that much.”
Roman could feel Trent’s eyes on him. “What about the settlement itself?” he asked Pankau, accepting the papers. “If they’re moving the power plant, won’t they have to move with it?”
Pankau grimaced. “Some of them will, yes. Not all.”
“And what,” Trent put in, “will the Tampies be giving up?”
Pankau turned a quietly official glare on him. “It just so happens,” he said evenly, “that on this one, the Tampies turn out to have been right. The power plant was interfering with the local migration pattern of at least four different species of birds and animals.”
Trent snorted. “Any animal that can’t adapt its life around one lousy power plant deserves extinction,” he growled. “It’s not like the damn ghornheads are actually useful for anything.”
Pankau kept his temper, but Roman could see it was a near thing. “The ghornheads may not be, no; but the same can’t be said for the mrulla. Which keep the rodunis population down to manageable levels in the fields, and which in turn follow the ghornheads around like adoring puppies.” He didn’t wait for comment, but turned back to Roman. “Ccist-paa also tells me they’re having trouble with human poachers grabbing space horses from their Cemwanninni yishyar system.”
“ ‘Their’ system?” Trent muttered, just loud enough to hear.
Pankau looked back at him, his gaze hardening. “Yes, their system. Like it or not, Commander, the Senate has relinquished all human claims there. The Tampies can make real use of a space horse watering hole; we cannot. Playing dog-in-the-manger is hardly the action of civilized people.”
The words came out, Roman noted, with the automatic fluency of a practiced speech. Probably one Pankau had had to deliver a great many times. “I think we all understand the Senate’s rationale,” he put in before Trent could say something he might later regret. “There are equally valid reasons, I think, why renouncing all claim to a system is, in general, not a terribly good idea.”
“Well, there’s nothing that can be done about it now,” Pankau said, his tone slightly sour.” At any rate, Captain,” he continued, gesturing at the papers in Roman’s hand, “you and the Dryden now have official Tampy permission to enter the yishyar…and as soon as you drop me back at Solomon you’re to head out there and see if you can catch this troublemaker.”
Arachne to Solomon to the yishyar. This just got better and better. “I appreciate your attempts to soothe the Tampies, Ambassador—”
“My job is not to soothe Tampies, Captain,” Pankau cut him off, his voice frosty. “It’s to carry out the orders and wishes of the Supreme Senate of the Terran Cordonale—and in this case, the Senate’s codified wishes are that unauthorized human ships stay the hell out of Tampy space.” He eyed Roman coldly. “Or are you suggesting that I don’t have the authority to send you on such a mission?”
That much, at least, wasn’t in question. Roman had seen Senate cartes blanches before, and was fully aware of the range of powers such papers held. “I don’t question your authority at all, sir,” he told Pankau. “But we’re talking a pretty long tour here for a ship the size of the Dryden. Two weeks to get you back to Solomon, six weeks or more from there to the yishyar system, plus the six-week return trip. That’s three months right there, plus whatever time we have to spend waiting at the yishyar for your poacher to show up.”
“Are you suggesting your crew can’t handle a few weeks in deep space?” Pankau asked, his tone challenging.
“No, sir,” Roman said evenly. “I’m suggesting that it would save us a couple of those weeks if you’d ask Ccist-paa to take a side trip to Solomon and drop you off.”
Pankau seemed a little taken aback. “Ah. I see.”
“Unless, of course,” Roman said, looking the other straight in the eye, “you don’t think you can handle a few hours in a Tampy ship.”
For a moment he thought the professional facade was going to crack. But Pankau had better control than that. “That will hardly be a problem, Captain. If you’ll set up the radio…?”
Ten minutes later, it was all arranged. An hour after that, Roman sat at his bridge station and watched the space horse Jump.
It was about the only thing about space horses that was, at least visually, totally unspectacular. One instant the space horse and ship were on the displays; the next instant they were gone.
“I wish to hell we could do that,” Trent muttered.
Roman gazed at the display, at the empty spot where the Tampy ship had been. “You and everyone else in the Cordonale,” he agreed soberly. Totally unspectacular…until you stopped to think about what had actually happened. Instantaneous travel, over interstellar distances…and with no known distance limit except the ability of the space horse to see its target star. The whole concept sent a shiver up Romans back. “Maybe when the Amity project gets started we’ll pick up some insights on how to tame and control them.”
Trent snorted. “Fat chance. Sir.”
Roman eyed him. “You don’t think humans and Tampies can learn to work together aboard the same ship, Commander?”
“I don’t think it’ll ever come to that, sir,” Trent said bluntly. “In my opinion, Amity’s nothing but a smoke screen the Tampies and pro-Tampy senators dreamed up to try and look like they’re doing something about the shared-worlds problem. The Starforce’s never going to finish fitting out the ship; and even if they do, odds are the crew will be so badly biased that the results of the test v
oyage will be completely fraudulent.”
“And if neither happens…?”
Trent looked him square in the eye. “Then, sir…no, I don’t believe humans and Tampies can work together. Not without killing each other.”
Roman grimaced. “You leave the Cordonale very few options.”
“Appeasement, or war,” Trent agreed quietly. “And even a Senate as spineless as this one won’t appease them forever.”
Roman looked at the display, at the place where the space horse had been a minute ago, wishing he could argue with any of Trent’s assessment. But he couldn’t. And even if he could, it was clear the other’s mind was already made up.
As were many other minds across the Cordonale.
“Just be sure to keep an open mind, Commander,” he warned the other. Even to his own ears the words sounded lame. “You never know when an alternative may present itself. Until then…we have a mission to carry out. Let’s go track us down a poacher.”
Chapter 2
“THIS,” STEFAIN REESE GROWLED to no one in particular, “is starting to get ridiculous.”
A wave of tired irritation rippled through the general boredom that had settled in around the Scapa Flow’s bridge crew. From his command chair Chayne Ferrol watched his men glare at Reese or pointedly ignore him, according to individual preference, and stifled a curse of his own. Like everyone else, he was roundly sick of Reese; unfortunately, political necessity dictated that someone remain on speaking terms with the man. “ ‘Haven’t caught anything in five hours?’ ˮ he quoted the old fisherman’s joke. “ ‘Don’t worry—I haven’t caught anything in eight hours.’ ˮ
The attempt at humor was wasted. “Save it, Ferrol,” Reese snorted. “I’ve heard that tired old joke at least five times in the last twenty-two days, and it wasn’t funny the first time.”
With an effort Ferrol hung on to his temper. “Mr. Reese, we made it very clear to you at the outset what it was you were letting yourself in for. Even a yishyar system doesn’t play host to more than a few space horses at a time, and there are four hundred billion cubic kilometers of asteroid belt out there for them to feed in. You can’t expect one to Jump right in on top of us the first day here.”
“And yet we’ve had at least fifteen of them Jump in close enough to register on the anomalous-motion program,” Reese countered. “You didn’t go after any of them, either.”
At the helm, Malraux Demarco stirred. “There’s a hell of a lot of difference between picking up a target blip and sneaking up on it,” he bit out. “None of us is exactly crazy about floating around out here watching the rocks go by, either. Try not to forget that you asked to come along.”
“Yes, well it wasn’t exactly my idea,” Reese shot back. “The Senator wanted me to come and observe—”
The slap of Ferrol’s hand on his armrest echoed briefly through the bridge, cutting off the growing argument in mid-sentence. “What?” Reese demanded, throwing a defiant glare in Ferrol’s direction.
For a long minute Ferrol just stared at the other, watching as the angry defiance faded into discomfort and then into the first twitchings of genuine fear. “You are not,” he said at last, the words quiet but icy cold, “to mention the Senator in connection with this ship, its crew, or its mission. Not here, not anywhere else. Ever. Do you understand?”
Reese swallowed visibly. “Yes,” he said.
Ferrol let the silence hang in the air a moment longer before turning back to Demarco. “Did we ever get anything more on that blip Randall picked up and then lost?”
Demarco shook his head. “The computer’s equipment check came up negative,” he said. “It may have been a space horse that Jumped in for a snack and immediately left.” He paused. “Or it may have been another ship.”
Ferrol nodded. The latter was his own gut-level conclusion. “You think they spotted us?”
Demarco shrugged. “Two and a half hours should have been plenty of time for them to have recalculated their position, looped around on Mitsuushi and come roaring in on us,” he pointed out. “Given that they haven’t, I expect it was just another poacher who spotted us and got nervous.”
“Or else an unusually patient Starforce captain who wants to catch us with our hands on the goodies,” Ferrol said. “We’ll have to keep our eyes open.”
“That’s all you’re going to do?” Reese asked.
Ferrol looked over at him. “What do you suggest, Mr. Reese?” he asked mildly. “That we turn tail and run home empty-handed—and without even knowing what it was we ran from?”
Reese clenched his teeth. “I was suggesting you might want to take some practical precautions,” he gritted. “Like putting some shielding over the Mitsuushi ring, for instance.”
“We have any Mitsuushi shielding, Mal?” Ferrol asked Demarco.
“That’ll block a warship’s ion beams? Not hardly.”
Ferrol looked back at Reese. “Any other suggestions?”
From the expression on Reese’s face the suggestion he was toying with would have been a ripe one. But even as he took the necessary breath to make it—
“Anomalous motion, Chayne!” Demarco snapped. “It’s—God, it’s practically on top of us. Bearing twenty-three mark six, fifteen mark two; range, fifty-six kilometers.”
“A warship?” Reese demanded, his voice half an octave higher than normal.
Demarco threw him a look that was pure strained patience. “No. A space horse.”
“If a rather puny one,” Ferrol added, studying his own readouts. It was small, come to think of it. In fact, unless the computer had completely scrooned up the distance calculation—
And abruptly, a shiver ran up his back. “That’s a calf, Mal.”
Demarco peered at the display. “I’ll be damned.”
Ferrol licked his upper lip, his heart beginning to thud in his ears as he keyed the general intercom. A space horse calf. Young, impressionable…and maybe, just maybe, trainable. “Captain to crew: we’ve got a target. Starting our approach now.” He paused. “Look real sharp, gentlemen. I want this one.”
At the helm Demarco teased the drive into operation, and Ferrol felt Reese’s eyes on him. “If you have something to say, Reese, say it and then shut up.”
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the other gesture toward the cylindrical creature now centered on the main display. “You hoping a calf won’t have the same fear of human beings that adult space horses do?” he asked.
So the man had operational brain cells, after all. “That’s the way it works with other animals,” he said shortly. “It’s called imprinting.”
“If the calf is young enough,” Reese agreed cautiously. “Whatever ‘young enough’ means in this case.”
“You want a debate, go back to the Senate,” Ferrol told him absently. “Right now, we have more important things to do.” He took a deep breath. “Okay, Mal; let’s go.”
They approached at a fraction of their usual stalking speed, with the result that it took them nearly an hour to drift into netting range. Excessive and unnecessary caution, perhaps—at no time did the calf show any signs at all of nervousness, much less panic—but they had the time to spare and there was no percentage here in taking chances. Besides which, there was no way to know whether a calf on the verge of spooking would exhibit the same signs of distress that an adult space horse would.
“Net guns ready,” Demarco announced. “Range to target…1.4 kilometers. Plates at full charge.”
Ferrol consciously relaxed his jaw muscles. This was it. “Stand by, primary gun. Ready…fire.”
Beneath him, the Scapa Flow bucked once as, on the tactical display, the missile shape of the coiled net appeared, dead on target for the calf, its tether lines snaking along behind it. Ferrol held his breath, his eyes on the calf. Just a few more seconds, he mentally urged it. Stay put just a few more seconds. On the screen the missile shape was disintegrating, unwrapping into an almost insubstantially thin mesh as it neared the calf. Just a f
ew more seconds…
And, too late, the calf noticed the object hurling toward it. The missile—or what was left of it—jerked as it was telekened to a halt…but the strands of the mesh were far too thin for the creature to get an adequate grip on. An instant later the net hit, wrapping itself solidly around the calf—
“Stun it!” Ferrol snapped.
The Scapa Flow bucked again, far more violently this time, as the netted calf tried to pull away from its captor; but even as Ferrol was slammed back into his seat cushions he heard the muffled crack! of the Scapa Flow’s huge capacitors. On the screen, the net flared briefly with coronal discharge…and the calf stopped moving.
Across the bridge, Reese swore reverently under his breath. “You did it. You really did it.”
Ferrol wiped a hand across his mouth. “Assuming we haven’t killed it, yes. Mal?”
Demarco spread his hands. “Who can tell with a space horse? Nothing obviously wrong with it, though.”
“Good.”
A flashing light caught Ferrol’s attention: the Scapa Flow’s middle hull, now highly positively charged from the capacitors’ discharge, was threatening to arc to the outer hull. “Shorting to outer hull,” Demarco announced, reaching for the proper switch.
“Hold it a minute,” Ferrol ordered, the hairs on the back of his neck tingling with unpleasant premonition. Shorting the middle and outer hulls together would leave the outer hull positively charged until it collected enough solar wind electrons to neutralize the imbalance…leaving the Mitsuushi inoperable until the process was complete. “Give me a full scan of the immediate area first,” he told Demarco. “Look for indications that the ship we tagged earlier might be skulking around out there.”
Demarco gave a curt nod and busied himself at the scanners. Ferrol waited, trying to ignore the flashing arc-danger warning, and after a minute Demarco straightened up. “Looks clear,” he reported. “Of course, he could be hanging way back somewhere with a Mitsuushi intercept loop already programmed in.”