Warhorse

  They would survive just fine. Bored, certainly; but boredom, contrary to popular belief, was seldom fatal.

  “Ffe-rho?”

  Ferrol made one last adjustment on the telescope’s remote hookup and floated above it to look forward. “What is it, Sso-ngii?”

  “Quentinninni has found a food supply and wishes to feed. May he?”

  Ferrol frowned. “Where does it want to go?”

  “Approximately fifty thousand kilometers in—” the Tampy paused, and then raised a hand—“that direction.”

  “Kennedy?”

  “It’s an asteroid belt,” she answered promptly. “Reflection data implies high metal content, as asteroids go.”

  Good feeding for a space horse, then. “What kind of rock density are we talking about?” he asked her. “Bearing in mind the limited amount of shielding this teacup has.”

  “Shouldn’t be dangerous,” Kennedy assured him. “Provided Quentin doesn’t go twitchy again and try to drag us through it retrograde. It’s as good a place as any to wait for the Amity.”

  “Okay,” Ferrol said, giving himself a push forward. “Give me a minute to strap in, Sso-ngii, and we’ll go and feed the baby.”

  They had arrived nearly twenty degrees off the ecliptic plane and with a slight retrograde motion that had them drifting leisurely toward the central star. A potentially deadly situation for a normal ship with a normal fuel supply; not even worth comment for a craft tethered to a space horse. Under Sso-ngii’s guidance Quentin pulled them toward the asteroid belt at a steady 0.5 gee for just under an hour, turned around and decelerated for the same length of time, and finally accelerated again to match speeds with the drifting stream of rocks.

  Floating at one of the side viewports, Ferrol watched as Quentin telekened a small boulder into one of its rear feeding orifices. He’d never before been this close to a feeding space horse, and it was one hell of an impressive sight. “You gotten a first-order analysis on those rocks yet?” he asked Kennedy.

  He turned to look as Kennedy fiddled with her keyboard. “Should be just about finished…yes, here it is. Um. Very interesting—no wonder Quentin was panting to get here. Unusually high percentages of iron and nickel; exceptionally high concentrations of bismuth, tellurium, thallium, and a dozen other trace metals. Especially right here—the stuff we passed while Quentin was matching speeds didn’t register as nearly this good.”

  And exceptionally high concentrations of trace metals meant…Craning his neck, Ferrol looked over at the Tampies. Even with filter masks plastered across their faces he could still see the sudden interest there. “A yishyar system?” he suggested.

  “Certainly by textbook definitions,” Kennedy agreed, turning to look at the Tampies too. “Sso-ngii?”

  “Yes,” the Tampy murmured. His raspy voice was dry and very alien, as if surprise or excitement had driven all attempts at human overtones from it.

  Ferrol could well understand their interest; his own mind was already simmering with the possibilities. A brand-new yishyar system—more to the point, a yishyar system eight hundred light-years outside of Tampy-claimed space. If the Senator could keep the Cordonale from meekly handing it over to the aliens—and if he could figure out a way to get back to the damned place himself—then maybe Demothi’s idiot experiment might yield something useful, after all.

  “Ferrol?”

  He blinked the grand schemes out of his mind and focused on Kennedy. “Sorry. You said…?”

  “I said I think we’ve got a space horse locator program aboard,” she repeated. “A simple one, probably: an anomalous-motion program coupled with a shape-recognition package. You want me to get it up?”

  And look for any other space horses that might be feeding here? “Good idea,” he nodded. “And don’t forget to tie in the recorders. Sso-ngii, let’s have Quentin boost speed a little—a few kilometers an hour shouldn’t affect the feeding any, and it’ll let us survey more of the belt.”

  “Your wishes are ours.” The Tampy paused. “Ffe-rho, Quentinninni is not happy. Something is disturbing him.”

  Ferrol pushed himself away from the viewport. “Something from in here?” he asked, bringing himself to a halt in front of them.

  “No,” Sso-ngii said. He hesitated, then removed the helmet and handed it past Demothi to Wwis-khaa. “It is something outside, something that causes…” He stopped again and made a gesture Ferrol had never seen before.

  “Uneasiness,” Wwis-khaa supplied, the word seeming to come out with difficulty. “Quentinninni is uneasy. Perhaps…fearful.”

  Something hard settled into the base of Ferrol’s throat. He’d seen space horses get skittish, spooked, and stressed…but never before had he seen one afraid. Or heard of one being afraid.

  What the hell out there could scare even a baby space horse?

  The lander was suddenly very quiet. Everyone else, apparently, was wondering the same thing. And perhaps coming to the same conclusion. “All right,” he said as Wwis-khaa handed the helmet back. “Stay on that feeling, Sso-ngii, and let me know the minute it changes or gets any clearer. Kennedy, get that locator going, but alternate it with the regular scan program. I don’t want us to miss something important just because it’s not shaped like a space horse.”

  “Right,” Kennedy said, and got to work. Her voice was still calm, but there was a hardness beneath it.

  They traveled for a time in silence, with questions and replies delivered in low tones. Outside the viewports several hundred asteroids could be seen at any given time, the nearest handful as irregular lumps, the rest as pinpoints of reflected light from the distant sun.

  Ferrol had spent more time than he cared to remember sitting around asteroid belts exactly like this one without the slightest touch of claustrophobia; but as the minutes dragged into hours he found the white dots on the monitor seeming to press ever closer and more oppressively around the lander. The air coming in through his filter mask felt to be growing ever hotter, and he found himself continually plotting updated escape routes through the moving boulders. A side effect of having to wear the mask for so long, he tried to tell himself; but down deep he knew better.

  And four hours after they began their search, they found the space horse.

  “It doesn’t seem to be moving at all,” Kennedy said, gazing closely at the readouts. “Just drifting with the asteroids.”

  Ferrol nodded, keying the enhancement program one more time. Again the fuzzy image of the distant creature sharpened just a bit; again, the computer was unable to resolve a section of its outline.

  He wasn’t sure exactly what that meant. But he knew already he didn’t like it. “Sso-ngii, has Quentin detected the other space horse yet?” he asked over his shoulder.

  “Yes. His uneasiness is increasing.”

  Ferrol chewed hard at his lip, uncertainty twisting at his stomach. The last thing he wanted to do was to take the lander any closer to that thing out there than he had to…but on the other hand, if the space horse was merely injured and not dead, there was every chance in the world it would detect them and Jump before Amity and its remote probes could arrive to study it. And if that happened, their chance of finding out what had done such damage to it would be gone. Probably forever.

  “All right,” he told Sso-ngii between dry lips. “Let’s get a little closer. Just a little, and take us in slowly. And let me know if Quentin shows any signs of spooking. Any signs—if we Jump out of this system Amity’ll never be able to track us down.”

  “Oh, God, we’d be lost forever,” Demothi murmured, his voice more muffled than usual by his filter mask. Ferrol half turned to tell him to shut up—

  “Movement!” Kennedy snapped suddenly. “Small objects—lots of them—moving toward us from the other space horse.”

  Ferrol spun back, a curse catching in his throat. Under attack—? “How small?” he demanded, shaking hands fumbling with his controls.

  “Five to ten meters across,” Kennedy told him. “Wa
y too small to be space horses themselves.”

  Ferrol had the proper display centered now, and for a long, horrifying moment he thought the approaching dots were somehow multiplying before his eyes… “What are they doing, collecting boulders?”

  “Looks like it,” Kennedy agreed. “Telekening them as they come.”

  Ferrol nodded, his hands curling into fists as he watched. Like a starburst skyrocket the dots spread apart; and then, to his surprise, they began to coalesce again. “Coming together about thirty kilometers ahead of us,” Kennedy read off the numbers.

  And there was no longer any choice left. A Jump, no matter how carefully planned, was damned risky, and could very well leave them lost for good. But it was less risky than sitting here and maybe getting slaughtered. “Get Quentin ready to move, Sso-ngii,” Ferrol ordered, keying for an astronomical display. If he could find a small, nearby star—

  “Hang on, Ferrol, they’re not attacking,” Kennedy told him. “Or at least the edge we can see around Quentin isn’t. They’re holding position relative to us, about twenty-seven kilometers out.”

  Ferrol switched back to the tactical display. Sure enough, the rangefinder showed them to be clustered together in front of Quentin, their speed perfectly matched with the calf s.

  So it was not, in fact, an attack. Or at least it wasn’t an attack yet. “Any idea what those things are? Anybody?” he added, looking back at the Tampies.

  “I do not know,” Wwis-khaa answered for both of them.

  Ferrol turned back in disgust, wondering why he’d even bothered to ask. “They’re probably related to the space horses, anyway,” Kennedy offered. “Motive power seems the same, not to mention the telekening of those rocks.”

  “And they must understand space horses,” Demothi said quietly.

  Ferrol twisted his head to look at the other. “Why must they?” he demanded.

  Demothi gazed back without flinching. “Adult space horse telekene range is usually twenty kilometers, occasionally extending to twenty-five.” He nodded toward Quentin. “You said those creatures were staying twenty-seven kilometers away.”

  A cold shiver ran up Ferrol’s back. “They’re staying out of telekene range,” he said. “Deliberately.”

  For a moment the lander was silent. Then Kennedy stirred. “On the other hand,” she reminded them, “if they’re out of Quentin’s range, then we’re probably outside of theirs, too.”

  “Point,” Ferrol admitted. “Well, then…let’s keep going toward that space horse out there and see what happens. Sso-ngii?”

  “Your wishes are ours,” the Tampy replied.

  A thought occurred to Ferrol as a mild surge of acceleration pushed him slightly into his seat: that if the creatures out there couldn’t recognize that Quentin was a calf with only a fraction of an adult’s telekene range, then they couldn’t be very intelligent. It was something to keep in mind.

  “We’re moving,” Kennedy reported unnecessarily. “The creatures out there…moving with us.”

  Ferrol frowned at his displays. He’d expected the creatures to hold their current position and try to prevent the lander’s approach. But Kennedy was right: they were sticking like paste, moving like slaved machines exactly twenty-seven kilometers in front of Quentin.

  Directly in front of Quentin…

  “Kennedy,” he said slowly, “give us a little boost, will you?—forward and starboard. I want to move around Quentin a bit.”

  “Sure.” The lander’s drive hissed briefly, and as the rein lines slackened and they moved around Quentin Ferrol kept his eyes on the tactical display.

  No mistake. The creatures and their attendant boulders didn’t care at all about the lander’s position.

  He turned, to find Kennedy’s eyes on him. “They’re staying with Quentin,” he told her.

  She nodded, her lips compressed together into a pale line. “I think,” she said, “that we’d better run a check on just how opaque that clump of stuff out there is.”

  “There is no need,” Sso-ngii said softly. “You are correct. Quentin cannot see through them.”

  “What?” Demothi demanded, his voice halfway between a gasp and a snarl. It was, Ferrol thought, the most emotion he’d ever heard in the man’s voice. “Why the bloody hell didn’t you say so before?”

  “To what purpose?” the Tampy asked reasonably. “We could not have Jumped—it is here that the Amity will come to search for us.”

  Demothi took a shuddering breath, clearly fighting for control. “We could have kept them from getting in front of Quentin in the first place,” he bit out. “We could have turned around and tried to get away. Instead, we’ve got—” He waved vaguely forward and sputtered to a halt.

  “All right, calm down,” Ferrol told him. “It might have been nice to know what was going on a little earlier, but once the things out there were in place it was too late to do anything about it. And Sso-ngii’s right; it would have been dangerous to try to Jump.” Dimly, a part of his mind noted the irony of him having to take the Tampies’ side of an argument, but it wasn’t something he had time to dwell on. “When the Amity gets here it shouldn’t have any trouble getting rid of the things; until then, there doesn’t seem to be anything immediately dangerous about them.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Kennedy said suddenly, her voice taut. “You’d better have a look at this, Ferrol.”

  Ferrol swiveled back to his console. In the past few minutes, while his attention had been on the creatures ahead, they’d covered a fair amount of the distance to the quiescent space horse. Enough so that the computer enhancement program could finally provide a reasonably sharp picture of the creature.

  Or rather, of the two-thirds of it that remained. Where the rest should have been was a ragged-edged hole.

  Chapter 17

  KENNEDY SWORE GENTLY UNDER her breath. “Recommendation, Ferrol: let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “No argument,” Ferrol said grimly. “Sso-ngii, turn Quentin around and ease us away. Take it slow and gentle—we don’t want to provoke those things with any sudden movements.”

  “Your wishes are ours.”

  Quentin began a leisurely turn, and Ferrol felt himself pushed gently against his chair’s side restraints. He watched the tactical display just long enough to confirm the cloud ahead was matching their maneuver, then turned to face the Tampies. An idea was tugging at the back of his brain… “Wwis-khaa,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “you told me you didn’t know anything about these creatures. Correct?”

  “It is correct,” the Tampy replied.

  “All right. Can you tell me, then, if other Tampies know anything about these creatures?”

  The alien hesitated. “I do not know for sure,” he said slowly. “I know that some have claimed to; that is all.”

  Ferrol grinned humorlessly to himself. “So what would one of those Tampies tell me about the creatures, if they were here?”

  There was a long silence, as if Wwis-khaa was trying to decide whether or not that came under the dreaded name of speculation. “I’ll remind you,” Ferrol said into the silence, “that our lives could depend on knowing what we’re facing.” A flash of inspiration—“Quentin’s life, too, of course.”

  Wwis-khaa exhaled, teeth chattering together. “They are spoken of as…carrion-eaters. As—” He fumbled for words.

  “Vultures,” Kennedy supplied. “Terran carrion birds.”

  “Yes,” Wwis-khaa said. “They were said to be observed beside a dead space horse in the asteroids of a distant system. No recordings were made.”

  “Did these vultures make any move against the Tampy ship?” Ferrol asked.

  “They moved toward it, but the space horse Jumped before they came near. The Handler afterward reported fear.”

  Ferrol thought a minute. “Did the Tampies actually see the dead space horse die?”

  “No. He was dead and being consumed when they arrived.”

  “Have the
re been any other sightings?” Kennedy asked. “Has anyone witnessed a space horse dying before the vultures showed up?”

  “I do not know,” Wwis-khaa said.

  “I also do not know,” Sso-ngii put in. “I know I have heard of no such reports; that is all.”

  “You think they’re more than just carrion-eaters?” Ferrol asked Kennedy.

  “They’re small, but there are a hell of a lot of them,” Kennedy pointed out thoughtfully. “The literature says that the Tampies have had some of their space horses in captivity for seven hundred years now; no one even knows what their natural life span is. To assume the vultures just happen to show up at the exact place and time a space horse dies is stretching things a little far.”

  “But we don’t know that’s the case,” Demothi spoke up, his voice uneasy. “This space horse could have been dead hundreds of years before the vultures found it. Or perhaps they exist in huge numbers all over the galaxy, drifting in suspended animation like spores until a space horse dies nearby. Or maybe a dying space horse gives out a telepathic pulse or something that attracts them. We just don’t know.”

  Kennedy threw Ferrol a look. He nodded agreement; Demothi was trying just a little too hard to talk himself into believing the vultures were harmless. And under the circumstances, wishful thinking wasn’t a luxury they could afford to put up with. “You’re talking like a Tampy thinks,” Ferrol told him, taking surprisingly little pleasure in popping the other’s bubble. “Before you get all misty-eyed over the infinite variety of the universe and the need to refrain from preconceived ideas, let me remind you that these allegedly passive carrion-eaters have very effectively locked us into this system.”

  “Looking us over, probably,” Kennedy said.

  “Or else waiting for Quentin to tire,” Ferrol said. “Though trying to starve a space horse in a yishyar system strikes me as pretty stupid.” Quentin had completed its turn now, and Ferrol felt himself being pushed back into his seat as the calf began to pick up speed. “The vultures stay with us the whole time?” he asked Kennedy.