Warhorse

  “We’ll take anything we can get at this point,” Roman said, a grim edge to his voice. “Put it into visual format and send it down to Hhom-jee. We’ll want to do the Jumps one-two-three, as fast as we can get in position for each one.”

  “Yes, sir.” She hesitated. “That assumes, of course, that Pegasus can do three Jumps in a row.”

  “A fair question,” Roman agreed, reaching for his intercom. “Let’s find out, shall we?”

  Ferrol keyed himself into the circuit just as a Tampy face appeared. “Rro-maa, yes?” he grated.

  “Yes,” Roman nodded. “The Amity’s just been called on for an emergency rescue mission, Rrin-saa. Had you been informed?”

  “Ffe-rho has told us, yes,” Rrin-saa confirmed.

  “All right. We’ll be doing three Jumps in a row, and I need quick answers to two questions. First: will Pegasus need to rest between the Jumps?”

  “I do not know,” the Tampy whined. “I know space horses have Jumped twice without rest; that is all.”

  “I see,” Roman said, with no sign of impatience at yet another example of Tampy waffling. Perhaps, Ferrol thought cynically, he was to the point of considering that an adequate answer. “I guess we’ll find out together,” the captain continued. “So: second question. Given that space horses absorb a high percentage of the solar energy that hits them, will a nova or pre-nova star be too bright for Pegasus to handle?”

  Ferrol swallowed. That thought hadn’t even occurred to him, and he found himself holding his breath as he waited for the answer.

  He needn’t have bothered. “I do not know, Rro-maa,” the other said. “I know that they come close to normal stars; that is all.”

  “Yes, well…thank you. Captain out.”

  Ferrol keyed off his intercom with a snort of disgust. “You didn’t really expect to get anything useful from them, did you?” he growled.

  Roman sent him a thoughtful look, turned to the helm. “Status, Ensign?”

  “We’re in line for Deneb,” MacKaig reported. “Hhom-jee signals Pegasus is ready.”

  Roman nodded. “Jump.”

  The Jump to Deneb went off without a hitch, and from the new location MacKaig was able to refine her numbers for the remaining two Jumps. A half-hour’s drive through normal space put Amity in position for the second Jump, to a dim and unnamed star.

  It seemed to Ferrol that it took longer for Hhom-jee to get Pegasus ready for that one. By the time they were ready for the third Jump, to 1148 itself, there was no doubt.

  For the first time in the voyage, Pegasus was showing signs of fatigue.

  “Rrin-saa, we’ve been in position for the past five minutes,” Roman said into the intercom, his voice carefully showing no signs of either irritation or nervousness. “What seems to be the trouble?”

  “There is not trouble,” the Tampy’s reply came faintly. “Pegasunninni is in mild perasiata—it will be only another few moments.”

  Roman hissed quietly between his teeth. “Have Hhom-jee push it as much as he can. There’s no guarantee as to how much time we’ve got.”

  “Your wishes are ours.”

  Roman broke the connection and turned to Ferrol. “Any word from below on the latest dust sweat analysis?”

  “The composition’s definitely changing,” Ferrol told him, the sour taste of irony in his mouth. He’d argued—loudly, in fact—against all of the dust sweat work; now, suddenly, it was turning out to be of more than academic curiosity, after all. It left Roman looking brilliantly foresighted; and it left him, Ferrol, looking wrong. It was a toss-up as to which part of that he hated more. “Overall output is up, but at the same time there’s been a sharp drop in several of the trace elements.”

  Roman nodded. So far he’d passed up any snide comments on the demise of Ferrol’s side of the dust sweat argument. Not that anyone on the bridge really needed reminding. “Sounds like a buildup of fatigue wastes,” he suggested.

  “Dr. Tenzing says that’s one of the possibilities.”

  “Mm. Well, we’ll just have to wait and see how fast it clears up.”

  “Yes, sir. So what’s this perasiata scam, anyway?”

  “It’s hardly a scam,” Roman said, his voice a little stiff. “It’s a land of withdrawal of consciousness the space horses sometimes experience. Something like the way the Tampies sleep, or so they’ve described it.”

  Ferrol nodded to himself. So there was a limit to how hard you could push a space horse. Interesting. Even more interesting that no one had discovered it before now.

  “Captain?” MacKaig spoke up. “Hhom-jee signals we’re finally ready to Jump.”

  “Very good. Execute.”

  The words were barely out of Roman’s mouth when the sunlight did its abrupt and instantaneous change…and they were there.

  To the naked eye, 1148 was merely a bright reddish star; seen through Amity’s sunscope, it was a truly awesome sight. Shrouded in a brightly lit haze, seemingly meshed together by roiling tendrils of colored vapor, the twin stars seemed to project both the ultimate in unity and the ultimate in conflict. A child in its mother’s arms; or two fighters literally tearing the life from each other.

  With a shiver, Ferrol forced the images down. The last thing he needed going into a pre-nova system was an overactive imagination.

  “Interesting view,” Roman remarked from behind him. “Ensign, do we have Shadrach on the scope yet?”

  “Yes, sir,” MacKaig told him. “About three degrees off a direct line to the stars, range approximately forty million kilometers.”

  “About as close as we were likely to get,” Roman said. “Good job. Feed the numbers to Hhom-jee and have him get us going.” He tapped his intercom, indicating to Ferrol to join the circuit. “Dr. Tenzing? Have your people come up with any theories as to what’s going on out there?”

  “Guesses only at this stage, Captain,” Tenzing grunted. The scientist’s expression, Ferrol thought, seemed to be hovering midway between scientific eagerness and a very unscientific desire to be several light-years away. “Two things seem pretty certain, though. One: both stars, especially B—the dwarf—are much hotter than they should be; and two, B is also cooling down fairly rapidly. That suggests we’re looking at some variant of a classical Anselm Cycle, either gravitationally or thermally driven.”

  “The Anselm Cycle being…?”

  “Well, it’s never actually been observed, as far as I know, but the scenario goes something like this. Some of the gas envelope material from A—the giant—falls past the gravitational equipoint onto B and triggers a burst of energy, which both heats B’s surface and blows off a shell of material. The extra radiant energy from that burp heats up A slightly, causing it to expand a bit more and therefore dump even more material onto B. Eventually—or so the theory goes—one of these cycles will dump enough matter onto B to trigger a proton-proton nuclear reaction in the surface. At that point, B goes nova, increases its brightness a factor of fifty thousand or so, and fries everything in the system.”

  Roman seemed to digest that. “Seems reasonable enough. When can we expect the next of these burps?”

  “We don’t know,” Tenzing admitted. “Best estimate is that the last one happened sixty to eighty hours ago, which turns out to be roughly two-thirds of what the theory would predict for the cycle. That would indicate the next one should come within thirty or forty hours, but I really can’t say for certain.”

  “How much warning will it give us before it goes?”

  Tenzing’s eyes flicked to the side. “Again, none of my people can say for certain. Probably a few minutes at the most.”

  “I see. Any idea as to which of these burps will trigger the nova itself?”

  Tenzing’s face tightened. “Not really. We don’t have the equipment to take accurate readings on the plasma dynamics going on out there, and without a better feel for the Lagrange surfaces and expansion coefficients all we can really do is guess. It could go on the very next burp, or it could
hold off for a couple of weeks.”

  Roman nodded grimly. “Thank you, Doctor,” he said. Cutting the circuit, he swiveled to face the engineering monitor. “How’s the ship taking this?”

  “Hull temperature’s going up, but not dangerously,” the ensign manning the station reported. Dangerous or not, he wasn’t taking his eyes off the readouts. “As long as B continues to cool down we should be all right. Particle radiation is marginal, but within safety limits.”

  Which was all right, Ferrol knew. Spaceship hulls were built to take a lot of that kind of abuse; and if worse came to worse they could move into Pegasus’ shadow—

  He spun around to face Roman; and in the captain’s face he could see that they’d both caught it at the same time. Roman got to the intercom first. “Rrin-saa? This is the captain. Why aren’t we moving?”

  Ferrol keyed himself into the circuit, and for a long moment the display remained blank. Then, abruptly, it cleared to show a contact-helmeted Tampy wearing a green/purple neckerchief. “Rro-maa, yes,” he grated.

  “Hhom-jee, why aren’t we moving?” Roman demanded again. “Ensign MacKaig sent you the direction several minutes ago.”

  “Pegasunninni will not move.”

  Roman swore under his breath. “Hhom-jee, we have got to get in there. Is Pegasus worried about getting closer to the hot star?—if so, we may be able to shield it from—”

  “Pegasunninni is not worried about star,” Hhom-jee said. “He will not move. Any direction. He does not seem to be well.”

  Roman looked up at Ferrol, his eyes abruptly tight…and Ferrol felt his stomach twist into a hard knot. Without Pegasus, Amity was trapped in this system.

  With a star preparing itself to explode.

  Chapter 9

  IT WAS ODD, ROMAN thought distantly. Over the years he’d spent hours on end in cramped deep-space shuttlecraft and powered worksuits, all without the slightest hint of trouble. Now, with billions of cubic kilometers of open space around him, he was suddenly feeling the unpleasant stirrings of claustrophobia.

  Trapped in a pre-nova system…“What do you mean, he’s not well?” he demanded. “You mean he’s sick, or fatigued, or what?”

  “I do not know,” was the all-too predictable reply. “I know that I have never seen a space horse like this; that is all.”

  Roman gritted his teeth. “Where’s Sso-ngii? Let me talk to him.”

  “He is resting.”

  “Well, wake him up,” Ferrol growled.

  “He cannot be disturbed,” Hhom-jee said.

  Ferrol started to say something else, stopped as Roman threw him a warning look. “I’m coming down there,” he told Hhom-jee. “Keep trying.”

  He broke the connection and unstrapped. “Commander, light a small fire under Tenzing’s people,” he ordered over his shoulder as he launched himself toward the door. “I want their best guess as to what’s wrong with Pegasus, and some suggestions on how to cure it, by the time I get back.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ferrol called after him.

  The Tampy section looked the same as it had the first time Roman had gone there, but this time he hardly even noticed the alien beauty of it. Fingers searching out the handholds half-buried in the moss, he pulled himself along the corridors as quickly as he could.

  He reached the Handler room door and pushed himself through the opening, to find three of the aliens waiting quietly there for him. Though to be more accurate, only Rrin-saa and Hhom-jee were actually waiting for him: floating alone over in a far corner, humming dreamily to himself, Sso-ngii wasn’t in any shape to be expecting Roman or anyone else.

  “Rro-maa,” Rrin-saa said gravely as Roman found one of the few patches of velgrip the Tampies had allowed in their section and planted his feet onto it. “Hhom-jee informed me you were coming.”

  “Hhom-jee informed me that Pegasus was sick,” Roman returned, breathing heavily through his filter mask as he threw a glance at Hhom-jee. Beneath the amplifier helmet, the Handler’s eyes were turned upward, toward the viewport and Pegasus.

  “We do not know if he is sick,” Rrin-saa said. “Perhaps he is simply disturbed by the changing light of the star and does not yet wish to move.”

  “Well, why don’t we know?” Roman demanded. “Hhom-jee is in contact with it—why can’t he just ask it what’s wrong?”

  Rrin-saa looked at Hhom-jee, back at Roman. “It is not like that, Rro-maa,” he said. “There are no questions or answers. There merely is.”

  Roman took a deep breath, forced down the sudden rush of anger. “This isn’t the time or place for philosophic discussions, Rrin-saa,” he told the Tampy. “There are fifty humans on that planet who are going to be vaporized if we can’t get Pegasus moving again. Not to mention everyone aboard Amity.”

  Rrin-saa looked at him, an odd intensity in his lopsided face. “We share your feelings, Rro-maa. The Tamplissta also have an observery on that world.”

  Roman felt his eyebrows lifting. There wasn’t any particular reason, of course, why there shouldn’t be Tampies down there—Shadrach was large enough to accommodate all the research teams anyone could want. But it felt somehow out of character for them to be interested in a non-living part of nature. “Why didn’t you say something about this earlier?” he asked.

  Rrin-saa touched fingers to ear: the Tampy shrug. “I was not asked.”

  Roman pursed his lips. “All the more reason for us not to hang around out here.” He nodded toward the humming Sso-ngii. “And if Hhom-jee can’t get Pegasus to move, perhaps Sso-ngii can.”

  Rrin-saa looked at Hhom-jee, at Sso-ngii, back at Roman. “I do not think so. He will not wish to use compulsion; and I do not think compulsion will be effective, regardless.”

  “Try it anyway.”

  Rrin-saa looked again at Sso-ngii. “He is resting now and cannot be disturbed.”

  Roman bit down hard on the inside of his cheek, forcing his mind to remain calm. “Rrin-saa…I understand that these rest periods are as important to you as sleep is to us. But we’re in a crisis situation here; and I know full well that waking him up won’t harm him. So wake him up.”

  “It will not be good for him,” Rrin-saa insisted. “And there is no need. If Hhom-jee cannot move Pegasunninni, then Sso-ngii will not be able to do so.”

  For a long moment Roman was sorely tempted to go over there and personally shake Sso-ngii awake. But there was a principle at stake here; a principle, and a reminder of why they were all on Amity in the first place. “Rrin-saa. When we began this voyage you acknowledged that I was in command of Amity, that for the sake of this experiment you and the others would agree to follow my leadership. I accept your assessment that Sso-ngii’s chances are probably very slim; but we humans thrive on slim odds—and when we win them it’s precisely because we don’t give up until we’re forced to.” He nodded toward Sso-ngii. “We haven’t hit that point; not yet. Consider it a lesson in human thought patterns, or even just a lesson in human stubbornness, whichever you’d prefer.

  “But also consider it an order.”

  For a handful of heartbeats Rrin-saa remained silent and motionless. Then, slowly, he floated over to Sso-ngii and touched him on the arm, speaking softly in the high-pitched Tampy language. The humming stopped; Sso-ngii shook himself like a wet terrier and rubbed his neck. Rrin-saa said something else. Sso-ngii gazed at Roman for a moment, then went to where Hhom-jee floated, relieving him of the helmet.

  “He will try now,” Rrin-saa said. There was no trace of any emotion in his voice that Roman could detect.

  For a few minutes the room was silent. Then Sso-ngii turned from the viewport. “Pegasunninni will not move,” he said. The words were clear and flat, with no room for argument.

  It had still been worth a try. “Keep trying,” Roman told Sso-ngii. Kicking himself over to the repeater instrument panel, he found the intercom and keyed for the bridge. “Commander? Anything from the survey section?”

  “Nothing of any use,” Ferrol said gri
mly. “They’ve come up with four or five theories, everything from radiation sickness to malnutrition, and not a shred of real evidence to support any of them. A cure is completely out of the question, of course.”

  That, too, had been worth a try…and it left Amity with just exactly one option left. “All right, then, I guess it’s time for some serious improvisation,” he told Ferrol. “Call engineering and have Stolt start running the fusion drive back up to power. Then tell Tenzing that he’s to collect the equipment hell need to continue analyzing Pegasus’ condition and get it to the lander.”

  Ferrol’s forehead creased. “I trust, sir, that you’re not going to try to drag Pegasus all the way to Shadrach.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “That’s correct,” Roman confirmed. “We’re going to cut Amity loose and go in alone. Pegasus will stay here, along with most of the survey section and enough Tampies to make sure it doesn’t suddenly get well and Jump on us.”

  “And what if—?” Ferrol broke off abruptly. “I’d like to discuss this with you privately, Captain, if I may.”

  Roman eyed him. “I’ll be back on the bridge in a minute. Will that be soon enough?”

  Ferrol nodded. “Yes, sir. I’ll get Stolt started on the drive.”

  “Very good. Out.”

  He turned back to the Tampies. “You heard, Rrin-saa?”

  “I heard, Rro-maa.”

  “All right. Figure out who you’ll need to come to Shadrach with Amity; the rest should start getting the lifeboats ready to fly. All three of your Handlers should stay with Pegasus, of course.”

  Rrin-saa hesitated. “Your wishes are ours,” he whined.

  “Keep trying to get Pegasus moving,” Roman said, heading for the door. “If you succeed, head out immediately. I’ll be on the bridge if you need me.”

  Amity’s corridors were already beginning to hum with activity as Roman emerged from the Tampy section and headed forward. Ferrol was waiting for him when he arrived at the bridge. “Stolt says it’ll take about an hour to bring the drive up,” he told Roman. “I told him not to cut any corners, that it would take that long for us to get the lander and lifeboats ready, anyway.”