Warhorse

by Timothy Zahn

  For a few minutes there was silence, and Ferrol felt occasional tugs as the calf began its first, tentative movements. Most of that motion was away from the lander, and Ferrol watched as Kennedy carefully played out the rein lines to their full half-kilometer length. As if she’d hooked a rare and giant fish…He shook the image from his mind. “Better get on with it,” he told her.

  “Right.” Kennedy gave the instruments a leisurely scan. “Okay. Rein lines all the way out and tight; Amity’s just passed the five-kilometer mark. They’re slowing now to zero-vee relative…all our cameras are on and transmitting.”

  “We’re in position, Commander,” Roman’s voice confirmed. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  “Yes, sir.” Ferrol turned to Demothi, sitting quietly there between Sso-ngii and Wwis-khaa, and braced himself. “Go ahead.”

  Sso-ngii removed the amplifier helmet and offered it to Demothi; with only the slightest hesitation, the other took it and placed it carefully over his head. Ferrol held his breath…and his brain had just enough time to register the indicators’ abrupt switch to red—

  And he was slammed hard into his seat as Quentin bolted.

  “Sso-ngii!” he snapped, his body automatically gauging the acceleration at about a gee. The calf’s full strength, probably—whatever Demothi had done, he’d done a damn good job of it. An instant later Quentin changed to a sideways motion, hurling Ferrol against his harness. The roar of maneuvering jets filled the lander; clamping his jaw tightly to protect his teeth, Ferrol watched as the two Tampies and Demothi fought to retrieve the helmet as it swayed erratically around them on its supporting cables. Quentin changed direction four more times before Wwis-khaa finally got a firm grip on the helmet and jammed it over his head. The lights changed, and the wild run began to ease up.

  “Kennedy, figure out our course,” Ferrol ordered as soon as he could safely open his mouth again. “We’ll want to curve back to the Amity—”

  “Ferrol—the Amity,” Kennedy cut him off. “It’s gone.”

  “It’s what?” Ferrol stabbed at his display controls. A complete steradian sweep showed nothing the size of a spaceship out there. “It can’t be gone,” he said, immediately cursing himself for making such an asinine statement. Relax, he ordered himself harshly. They wouldn’t just Jump off and leave us. There’s a good and proper explanation here. Somewhere. “Are we still in the 11612 system?”

  “Quentin’s supposed to be too young to Jump,” Kennedy reminded him, hands playing over keys.

  “I know what he’s supposed to be—”

  “And anyway, the spectrum matches,” Kennedy added as the computer finished its analysis.

  Ferrol pursed his lips. The shock was fading, and he could feel his brain starting to work again. “Did you hear anything on the radio or laser?” he asked her.

  She shook her head. “I was running the jets most of the time to try and smooth some of that out,” she reminded him, already keying the recorder rewind. “A short transmission could easily have been lost in the noise…here we are.” She listened a moment on her own headset, then keyed for speaker.

  Roman’s message was indeed brief. “Lander—Ferrol— Man o’ War’s spooking. Hhom-jee can’t hold it—we’ll be back—” The voice and hum of Amity’s carrier cut off simultaneously.

  Kennedy looked at Ferrol. “I think,” she said dryly, “we’ve just made a brand new discovery about space horses. Isn’t science wonderful?”

  “Just terrific,” he agreed. “How about it, Sso-ngii?” he asked, turning to face Demothi and the Tampies. “You want to tell me why Man o’ War would suddenly spook and Jump when Quentin was the one who was scared?”

  Demothi frowned. “What makes you think he would know—?”

  Ferrol silenced him with a look. “Sso-ngii?”

  “I do not know,” Sso-gnii replied. “I know that sometimes emotions can be communicated between nearby space horses; that is all.”

  “Telepathy?”

  Sso-ngii gave the short fingers-to-ear gesture that was the Tampy shrug. “What is telepathy?”

  Kennedy chuckled. “Telepathy: any method of communication we don’t yet understand.”

  Ferrol snorted; but she was right. And anyway, the method hardly mattered at this point. “All right, then, try this one,” he said to Sso-ngii. “Assuming Quentin’s panic was somehow transmitted to Man o’ War, why did Man o’ War Jump instead of coming to Quentin’s aid?”

  “You’re anthropomorphizing,” Demothi said stiffly. “You can’t expect a space horse to act like a human mother.”

  “Mmo-thee is correct,” Sso-ngii said. “Perhaps Manawanninni heard only the calf’s fear and Jumped as the calf wished to do.” His face twisted even more than usual. “Humans do not understand such complete sharing of feelings.”

  “No, I think the noble Tampy empathy is probably beyond us,” Ferrol grunted. Something on Kennedy’s board beeped. “Is that the Amity?” he asked, turning to scan his own displays.

  Kennedy shook her head. “No—one of the outrider boats has found us with a coram laser. Basically repeating the captain’s message.”

  Ferrol hadn’t thought about the fact that the three outriders would have been left behind, too. “Might as well head back to join them,” he told her. “Figure a course for Wwis-khaa to follow—I’ll get our laser set up and tell them we’re on our way.”

  “Assuming Wwis-khaa can get Quentin to obey,” Kennedy reminded him.

  Ferrol glanced at the Tampy, noted the glowing rows of tiny green lights on the helmet. “I think anyone who can manage a wild space horse should have no problems with Quentin,” he assured her. He turned back—

  “But Wwis-khaa won’t be Handling Quentin,” Demothi said. “I will be.”

  Slowly, deliberately, Ferrol turned back again. Demothi had drawn himself up to his full height, an affectation which looked even more ridiculous while strapped into a lander seat than it had when standing upright in the captain’s office. “What was that?” he asked mildly.

  “I said I’ll be Handling the calf,” Demothi repeated. “My orders from the Senate and the Admiralty—”

  “You had your chance,” Ferrol cut him off, a flash of anger boiling through him. With all that had happened since Quentin bolted, he’d almost forgotten that Demothi’s failure to control the calf was the end of a dream. The end of his dream… “You had your chance, and it’s over.”

  “It wasn’t a fair trial.” Demothi’s usual passive expression had vanished, replaced by an odd combination of determination and pleading. “It was a new experience, both for me and for Quentin, and neither of us had a chance to adjust. I’ve been thinking it through, and I believe I know what I did wrong.” He took a deep breath. “Please, Commander. Just one more chance.”

  “In twenty-four hours or so,” Kennedy murmured, “Quentin’ll be fully capable of Jumping.”

  Ferrol looked sharply at her, the Senator’s veiled warnings about her flooding back. She looked back at him, nothing but mild questioning on her face…

  And she did, unfortunately, have a damn good point. If Demothi was ever to have a second chance, it had to be while the calf was still too young to Jump. “All right,” he ground out, giving an extra tightening tug on his harness. “One more chance, and that’s it. Wwiskhaa, give him the helmet. Demothi, you concentrate on setting up a stable contact before you try anything fancy like moving—and if you feel Quentin panicking you take the helmet off damn quick. Got that?”

  “Yes.” Demothi gave him a lopsided smile. “I won’t fail.”

  Right, Ferrol thought sourly. Demothi accepted the helmet from Wwis-khaa and slid it over his head. The indicator lights blinked uncertainly, each flicking between red, orange, and green several times before finally settling down to green. The lander rocked gently once, but nothing worse happened; and as the lights continued their progression Ferrol had the eerie sense of watching history in the making. Demothi was going to make it…and then Ferrol droppe
d his eyes a fraction and focused on Demothi’s face.

  The man looked like he was going to explode.

  “Sso-ngii!” Ferrol shouted…but he was too late. With another spine-wrenching tug the lander pulled sharply to the left. Ferrol’s eyes came back to focus to find Sso-ngii reaching for the helmet, pulling against the lander’s acceleration to try and get it off Demothi’s head. The maneuvering jets kicked in again, and as they did so another lurch twisted the lander around, throwing Ferrol’s head to face the side viewport and the dim red star visible there.

  He was still facing that direction when the star vanished.

  Chapter 16

  QUENTIN SUBSIDED, AND THE maneuvering jets cut off, and for a long minute the lander was silent. A hundred curses chased each other through Ferrol’s mind, none of them strong enough to adequately cover the impossibility that had just happened. Ahead, the edge of a brilliant blue-white star blazed painfully at them around Quentin’s bulk; slowly, Ferrol turned from it to focus on Kennedy’s profile. Perhaps sensing his movement, she turned to face him, and for a moment they just gazed at each other in silence. Apparently, a small section of Ferrol’s mind decided, Kennedy’s repertoire of curses didn’t cover this situation, either.

  “Well,” he said to her at last, “shall we see what we’ve got here?”

  She took a deep breath. “Right. Okay.” Slowly, as if still half paralyzed by the shock of it, her fingers began to move across her keys. Ferrol watched them a moment, then turned around.

  The two Tampies were sitting quietly, the helmet on Sso-ngii’s head showing all green. Between them, Demothi had the expression over his filter mask of a small child who has insisted on carrying the family heirloom crystal and then dropped it. “We’ll dispense with any spilled-milk recriminations for now,” Ferrol said, fighting to keep his voice calm and controlled. “Wwis-khaa, I want to know how Quentin managed that Jump.”

  “I do not know—”

  “Yes, you do,” Ferrol cut him off harshly. “You know, or at least have a good idea. What is it, that space horse calves can Jump at birth, but just can’t see well enough to lock onto a target star?”

  Wwis-khaa tilted his head. “It is possible.”

  “But it is only a thought,” Sso-ngii cautioned. “The Tamplissta do not know for certain.”

  “I’ll settle for good half-assed theories at this point,” Ferrol countered. “So. How well could Quentin see? Wwis-khaa?”

  The Tampy hesitated. “I do not believe he could see very well,” he said at last, mouthing the speculation with obvious reluctance.

  Ferrol carefully unclenched his teeth. “Look,” he said, fighting hard against a sudden urge to wrap his fingers around someone’s neck. “I understand how you hate to repeat anything you don’t personally know to be a fact. But try and get it through your heads that we are lost; and the only way we’re going to find our way back is if we have some answers.”

  Silence. “Demothi, keep working on them,” Ferrol growled, the rage turning into disgust. “Do something useful for a change.” Turning away, he focused on Kennedy. “Got anything yet?”

  “Not really.” Her voice, he noted with relief, was back to its usual iron control. “The computer’s still checking the brightest stars, but I doubt the nav program’s complete enough to have any real chance of locating us. If this was the Amity I could get it for you in three minutes; as it is, all I can say is that we’re in a system with a B4 star, we’re more than eight hundred light-years from where we started, and we’re almost certainly still in the Milky Way.”

  Eight hundred light years. Ferrol shivered. “Okay,” he said. “So. Assume you’re Captain Roman, and you come back to find us gone. What do you do?”

  Kennedy pursed her lips. “Well…if you’re right, that it’s the calf’s vision that limits its Jumping ability, then it should be pretty straightforward. All the Amity has to do is pick out the brightest stars visible from the 11612 system and start Jumping until they find the right one.”

  Ferrol gritted his teeth. Straightforward enough…unless Roman decided that this was all some elaborate scheme he, Ferrol, had cooked up with Demothi to steal a space horse calf. If the captain thought that, he might try some other response entirely. Such as starting his search with the Cordonale and nearby stars…

  With an effort he shook the thought from his mind. They were in enough trouble already without going shopping for more. “If that’s the case,” he said, “I guess our logical response is to conserve our resources and wait.” Off in a far corner of his panel, out of the way, was the red-rimmed emergency beacon switch. Reaching over, he flipped it on. “Let’s just hope the captain’s smart enough to figure it out.”

  “He is,” Kennedy said.

  Ferrol winced at the conviction in her voice. Roman was smart enough, all right. The only question was whether he was too smart to waste time with obvious red herrings.

  But there was no point in mentioning that to Kennedy. “Well,” he said, trying to sound as calm as she did, “as long as we’re just sitting here, we might as well get something useful done. I’m going to go back and get the telescope set up; you load the survey program into the computer and get it running. Let’s see if this system has anything worth looking at.”

  Roman watched the outrider recording twice, a cold knot settling all the harder into the pit of his stomach. Gone. A space horse calf; three humans and two Tampies—all impossibly vanished. “Marlowe?” he asked.

  He looked up to see the other straighten from his console and shake his head. “Sorry, Captain. The image is just too distant for the computer to scrub it any cleaner.”

  “So there’s no way you can tell me which way Quentin was pointing when they Jumped.”

  He hadn’t meant the words to sound like an accusation, but Marlowe winced anyway. “No, sir,” he admitted. “I’m sorry.”

  Roman looked back at his display, the taste of defeat souring his mouth. So Demothi had been an agent of the anti-Tampies, after all. With a mission of stealing a space horse calf…and Roman had sat idly by and let him do it.

  But how in hell’s name had he gotten Man o’ War to Jump? For that matter, how had he gotten Quentin to Jump?

  Shutting off the useless outrider recording, he keyed for the Tampy section. A moment later Rrin-saa’s face and yellow-orange neckerchief appeared. “Rro-maa, yes?” the other grated.

  “Rrin-saa, I need some information,” Roman said. “Everything we thought we knew about space horse calves said that one as young as Quentin couldn’t Jump. How did it do that?”

  “I do not know,” came the all-too-predictable response.

  Roman gritted his teeth. “Is Hhom-jee there? Hhom-jee, can you hear me?”

  “I hear,” a voice came from the background.

  “Hhom-jee, how was Quentin able to Jump?” Roman repeated his question.

  “I do not know,” the other said. “I know only that the space horse calves I have touched have not felt ready to Jump, even though their fear was at first great. That is all.”

  Roman glowered at Rrin-saa’s silent image. “Thank you,” he managed, switching off.

  “Lot of help they are,” Marlowe murmured.

  “They could have been more informative,” Roman agreed grimly. “Looks like we’re on our own here, people. Spin me a theory, Lieutenant.”

  “The simplest explanation, it seems to me, is that new calves don’t Jump because they can’t see where they’d be Jumping to,” Marlowe suggested. “If so, all we need to do is make a list of the brightest stars visible from here and start checking them out.”

  Roman nodded. It was in many ways a default hypothesis; but it was the only one where the logical response was both obvious and at the same time something they could handle. “Lieutenant Yamoto?” he invited.

  “I agree with Marlowe, sir,” she said, tapping a key. “Here’s the list of stars, in order of decreasing brightness, down to about first magnitude.”

  For a momen
t Roman studied the list. There were fifteen entries, topped by three B-class stars: a Bl, a B4, and a B6. Halfway down the list…

  “Shall I have Hhome-jee set course for number one, Captain?” Yamoto asked into his thoughts.

  Roman pursed his lips. “No,” he said slowly. “We’ll start with number six.”

  Marlowe turned to frown at him. “Vega?”

  “Yes,” Roman told him. “If they’re not there I want to be close enough to the Cordonale to Jump back and get the alert out on tachyon.”

  Marlowe’s forehead furrowed. “Yes, sir,” he said, a little uncertainly.

  “Yes,” Roman said quietly, answering the unspoken question he could read in the other’s face and voice. “I think it’s entirely possible the whole thing was an attempt by Demothi to steal the calf…and if so, chances are he’ll be heading back to the Cordonale to deliver it.”

  Marlowe’s face hardened. “I understand, sir. We’ll want to get after him as fast as we can, try and cut him off.”

  “Right.” Roman shifted his eyes back to the helm. “Alert Hhom-jee, Lieutenant. I want to Jump as soon as he can get Man o’ War lined up properly.”

  “Yes, Captain.” Yamoto hesitated. “Sir…what if it really was just an accident, though? They’ll be stuck out there somewhere, waiting for us to come find them.”

  “And we will,” Roman told her shortly. “After we’ve checked out the other possibilities.”

  She colored slightly. “Yes, sir,” she said, and turned back to her console.

  Roman regarded the back of her head, a slight twinge of conscience poking through the high-speed mental shuffling of plans and possibilities and contingencies. She was right, of course; if it had been just an accident Ferrol and the others were in for a few tense hours. But the lander was routinely kept well stocked, and with only five of them aboard they could hold out a couple of weeks if absolutely necessary.