“Like they were welded there,” she confirmed. “Quentin’s just too slow on turns to get ahead of them. Even with them having to lug that optical net of boulders along with them.”
An optical net. An odd term…but that was exactly what it was. A semisolid disk that had them trapped as thoroughly as if they were inside the webbing back at the Tampies’ Kialinninni corral.
Trapped…but why?
“Kennedy,” he said slowly, “is that locator program still running?”
She checked. “Yes. Still nothing registering.”
“Can the anomalous-motion section be extracted and run alone?”
Kennedy gave him a hard look. “You think,” she said, dropping her voice, “that the vultures might be holding us here for something else?”
“I can’t see them breaking off a good meal just for the fun of it,” Ferrol told her, matching his volume to hers.
She nodded and got to work; and a second later Ferrol was slammed briefly into his seat as Quentin jerked. “What was that?” he snapped, twisting his head to look at the Tampies.
Sso-ngii’s mouth moved soundlessly for a handful of heartbeats before any words came out. “I do not know,” he said. “I know that I have never felt such intensity of feeling in a space horse before; that is all.”
“Well, what’s it like?” Ferrol snarled. “Is it like fear, or concern, or happiness—?”
“Movement!” Kennedy snapped. “One object, very large; bearing one hundred starboard, thirty nadir, range 170 kilometers. Closing!”
Ferrol had the object on his own display now; the scale clicked on—
“Ffe-rho!—Quentinninni is afraid—I cannot hold him—”
“Give it its head!” Ferrol barked. “Just don’t let it Jump—”
The rest of his words were blown out with his wind as Quentin shot forward, ramming him two gee’s-worth back into his seat. “Kennedy!” he managed as his body struggled to adjust to weight again.
“No contest,” she said, her voice tight. “The thing’s doing at least seven gees toward us.”
Ferrol got a hand to his display, keyed for tactical. Two gees or not, the vultures were still staying with them. And the scale on the intruder— “My God,” he said. “Damn thing’s almost two kilometers long.”
“I’d say we’ve found our space horse killer,” Kennedy agreed. “That thing’s bearing down on us like a hungry shark.”
“Yeah, well, let’s see if we can discourage it a little.” Fighting the extra weight in his arms, Ferrol keyed the comm laser for a full-intensity unmodulated pulse and set it to tracking the shark, wishing to hell he had some real weaponry to work with. “We got anything aboard this teacup besides the laser?” he asked.
“Not that I know of,” Kennedy said. “But we’re running directly away from it now, which means the main drive’s pointing straight down its throat.”
“Good.” The tactical showed the laser locked firmly on the elongated mass overtaking them. “Be sure to balance with the forward jets—we don’t want to ram Quentin.”
“Right. Range, forty-five kilometers—”
And without warning the weight was abruptly lifted from them. An instant later Ferrol was jammed painfully against his harness, the hiss of the forward jets in his ears. He caught just a glimpse of Quentin’s dark bulk as it rushed toward the forward viewport—
And with a grinding of metal the lander caromed off the calf’s side.
It took a second for Ferrol to shake off the shock. “Kennedy—what the hell—?”
“Shark reached out and grabbed Quentin, I think,” she said, her voice a bit slurred. Ferrol looked sharply at her; but her next words were clear enough. “I couldn’t stop us in time.”
From behind them came a low moan—fear or anger or something else, coming from Demothi. “Sso-ngii, is Quentin hurt badly?” Ferrol called, glancing back.
“He is not injured.” The words were barely understandable, as if the Tampy could spare only a tiny fraction of his mind for the task of speaking English. His eyes were bright; his twisted face preternaturally alert and very alien. “He is being drawn toward the other. Who will consume him.”
Demothi moaned again. “Kennedy, give the shark a full-power spurt from the drive,” Ferrol gritted. “See if we can distract it.”
“Damn far away for that.”
“Yeah, but the telekene grip will just get stronger as it reels us in. We’ve got to try it.”
“Right.”
Ferrol braced himself; and was slammed again into his seat for an instant as the roar of the lander’s fusion drive filled the boat. Lost in the noise was the crack of capacitors as his jabbing finger fired the laser. The sound and acceleration cut off simultaneously. “Sso-ngii? Are we free?”
“The hold remains,” the Tampy said.
“But we’re not moving backwards any more,” Kennedy put in. “Could be we’ve confused or startled it.”
“Hit it again,” Ferrol ordered. On the visual he could see what looked like one of the shark’s feeding orifices rotating into view, and he’d just focused the laser on it when Kennedy fired the drive again. He rode it out, clenching his teeth firmly together; and she’d just cut off the power when the capacitor blinked ready. This time, the crack was clearly audible. “Again,” he snapped. If the tactical numbers were right, they’d actually gained a little distance on their attacker. The roar and acceleration came—
And the lander leaped forward, swaying wildly back and forth like a pendulum. “Sso-ngii!” Ferrol snapped, fighting both the two-gee weight and a sudden surge of nausea.
“Quentinninni is free,” Sso-ngii said. “He is running toward an asteroid where he hopes to hide.”
Ferrol took a shuddering breath, eyes on the tactical. The shark was falling back, apparently not pursuing. Fifty kilometers…fifty-five…sixty—probably out of telekene range now…
“The vultures are still with us,” Kennedy said.
Ferrol nodded grimly. “I’ll settle for half a victory at this point,” he told her. “Sso-ngii, what’re the chances we’ve discouraged the shark permanently? After all, Quentin’s a pretty small mouthful for a predator that size.”
“I do not know,” was the predictable reply. “But you humans are a predator species yourself. Can you not form an accurate idea within yourself?”
Ferrol swallowed. Indeed he could…and the idea he formed wasn’t an especially encouraging one.
They fled at a full two gees’ acceleration for nearly ten minutes before Quentin could be persuaded to ease up. Under Sso-ngii’s guidance the calf modified its speed and heading until it was paralleling a particularly dense section of the asteroid belt. “Maybe we should try weaving in and out, see if we can throw the vultures off,” Ferrol suggested.
“Probably a waste of time,” Kennedy shook her head. “However they hold station in front of Quentin, I don’t think they’re doing it strictly by visual means.”
Ferrol frowned. “What makes you think that?”
“When they first moved in on us they were nearly a hundred kilometers away,” she reminded him, fingers skating across keys. “Quentin’s only about a hundred meters long, with a maximum width maybe twenty-five. The difference between head-on view and complete broadside would have been only sixteen minutes of an arc. That’s…let’s see; a thumbnail at seventeen meters. Yet they immediately settled in directly in front of Quentin. I find it hard to believe their eyesight is that good.”
“I don’t see what difference it makes how they do it,” Demothi growled impatiently.
For a man who’d spent two months trying to suppress human emotions, Ferrol thought sourly, Demothi was certainly making up for lost time. “How it matters,” he told the other, “is that whatever they’re locking onto is very likely the same thing the shark’s going to use to track us if and when it decides on a rematch.” At least, that was what he thought the point was. He glanced at Kennedy, got a small confirming nod, and focused on the Tampie
s. “Sso-ngii, Wwis-khaa: do either of you know of any long-range senses space horses have that the shark and vultures may be duplicating?”
“It is thought that the internal source of telekinetic power is detectable,” Wwis-khaa said. Apparently, having been verbally maneuvered once already into revealing something he didn’t know personally made it easier the second time. Either that, or even Tampies could give up their silly philosophic games when their own deaths were on the line. “In addition, it is thought that much of a space horse’s energy is produced by small fusion and fission reactions within his body.”
“That’ll give off neutrinos, among other things,” Kennedy commented thoughtfully. “Maybe in a recognizable pattern.”
“I’d vote for the telekene-detector, myself,” Ferrol said. “The direction or distribution of the ability is clearly asymmetric; otherwise, space horses could back up better than they do. A neutrino distribution ought to be more uniform.”
Kennedy shrugged. “Maybe. Either way, though, it means we’ve got at least one very obvious solution.” She gave him a significant look, gave a slight nod forward.
“What’s that?” Demothi demanded, his voice heavy with suspicion. “What’s she talking about?”
“She’s talking about cutting Quentin loose and letting it run,” Ferrol told him.
He was prepared for objections. But not prepared enough. “What?” Demothi all but yelped. “You can’t do that—Quentin wouldn’t have a chance.”
“It might,” Kennedy put in. “Either way, if it’s a choice between the space horse or us—”
“You can’t do that,” Demothi repeated. “Damn it all, Ferrol, you might as well just kill Quentin here and now.”
“Mmo-thee,” Sso-ngii said, reaching an awkward hand to Demothi’s shoulder.
Demothi shrugged off the touch. “That’s a calf, damn it—a baby.”
“It’s survival of the fittest,” Ferrol snapped, suddenly tired of having to argue about everything he said. “Ecology, Demothi—space horses eat rocks, sharks eat space horses, and vultures eat what’s left. You’re so keen on Tampies and Tampy philosophy?—well, that’s it in a nutshell. Letting nature take its course.”
Demothi’s face was red; but it was Sso-ngii who spoke up. “We respect all living things and the systems in which they live, yes,” the alien said. “Yet, in accepting a space horse’s service, we in return offer him our protection. We cannot turn Quentinninni free under such dangerous conditions, Ffe-rho. Not even to save ourselves.”
“It doesn’t really matter whether you like it or not,” Ferrol told them shortly. “I’m in command here, and I’ll do what I think necessary.” He took a deep breath. “As it happens, though, turning Quentin loose now would only postpone the problem. The minute the Amity gets here they’re going to be in the same fix we’re in now, and the more data we can collect between now and then, the better everyone’s chances of getting out of here alive.”
He turned to Kennedy. “So. First thing, I suppose, is to call up the record of the fight, see if we did any real damage to the shark.”
He hadn’t expected to find evidence of any; and in this he was right. “Just not enough energy in either the laser or the drive to overload its natural absorption capabilities,” Kennedy shook her head as she frowned at the analysis. “At least not at the distance we had to work from.”
Ferrol nodded. “So what we need is a way to concentrate a lot of energy into either a smaller area or a shorter time.”
“You speak of attacking the shark,” Sso-ngii said quietly. “Perhaps you intend to kill it. It would be preferable if another way could be found.”
Ferrol felt his lip twist. The shark had been out of sight for several minutes, so of course the Tampies were going all soft and mushy again. So much for survival instincts. “You might want to take a minute right now,” he threw over his shoulder, “and decide whether it’s Quentin or the shark you really want to protect.”
“Why may we not protect both?” the Tampy persisted. “If we can simply evade the shark until the Amity arrives, then disrupt the optical net which prevents our escape—”
“And how do you expect us to do anything to the vultures when they stay on Quentin’s far side and thirty kilometers away?” Demothi asked dully.
“As a matter of fact,” Kennedy put in. “Sso-ngii’s right. We can’t hope to kill the shark—neither we nor the Amity is equipped with the sub-nuke torpedoes or military lasers we’d need to do that. All we can go for is escape; and the vultures are our best breakpoint.”
“I don’t suppose you’d have any ideas how we’d do that,” Demothi growled.
“Maybe,” she said. “Anyway, now’s the time to try.” She tapped a spot on the tactical display. “The shark’s moving away from us.”
Doing 1.4 gee, Ferrol read off, on a course that would take it back to the dead space horse. “It’ll be back,” he murmured to Kennedy. “The advantages of eating a space horse are the same as feeding at a yishyar, only more so: all the trace and rare elements it needs, all in the right proportions and concentrated in a single package.”
“Why all predators exist, in other words,” Kennedy nodded. “Which means we have to come up with something now, before it finishes out there and heads back for dessert.”
“Right. You have any idea?”
“Possibly.” She tapped some keys, and a schematic of the lander appeared on her display, together with an inventory list. “It’ll depend on how much spare webbing we’ve got aboard, and on what sort of miracles we can do with the engines.”
She began describing her plan…and as she talked, Ferrol found himself studying her face. Seeing, as if for the first time, the cool eyes and the small age lines around them. Kennedy’s file, he remembered, had listed her age as forty-six—not quite twice Ferrol’s own—with a military record that had been left deliberately and disturbingly vague. The Senator had hinted that that hidden record was an impressive one; he’d out-and-out warned Ferrol that she was highly dangerous.
And dangerous was exactly what they needed right now. He hoped like hell the Senator hadn’t been exaggerating.
Chapter 18
THE BL STAR HAD been big and almost viciously bright, and even though its dim white-dwarf companion had orbited well outside the larger star’s photosphere, the whole thing had still evoked unpleasant memories of the Amity’s fun-filled tour through Dr. Lowry’s pre-nova system. Not in his mind alone, Roman had noted; it was reasonably clear from their quiet and hurried efficiency that Yamoto and Marlowe felt it, too, and had set themselves the mutual goal of doing their search as quickly as possible and getting out.
The B4 star that was second on their list wasn’t a lot dimmer, but at least it had no companion. No companion, but something considerably more surprising.
It was, according to Rrin-saa, a yishyar system.
“Interesting indeed, Rrin-saa,” Roman agreed. The alien face centered in his intercom seemed more twisted than usual, he noticed. Excitement? Probably. “Would Quentin have been able to detect that from the 11612 system?—maybe come here deliberately so that it could feed?”
“I do not know, Rro-maa.”
“Captain,” Marlowe spoke up, an odd tone in his voice. “Anomalous-motion program just triggered.”
“Quentin?” Roman asked, keying for the proper screen.
There was a long pause. “No, sir. It’s…I’ll be damned. Captain, there’s more than one—my God, it’s a whole bunch of them,” He swiveled around, his eyes shining. “Captain, this is something absolutely new—another species of space-going creatures.”
Roman shook his head in wonderment. First the space horse calvings, and now this. Amity was indeed a charmed ship. “Rrin-saa, take a look at your display. Have the Tampies ever run into these things before?”
“I…do not know.”
Roman looked back at the intercom. There’d been an uncharacteristic hesitation there. “Rrin-saa?”
Another hesita
tion. “I know that others have claimed to have seen them; that is all.”
Roman glanced at Marlowe. “And what would those others say about them?” he asked Rrin-saa.
“They are said to be carrion eaters.”
Something hard settled into Roman’s stomach. “Quentin?”
“I do not know.”
Roman gritted his teeth. “Marlowe?”
“No sign of their emergency beacon yet,” the other said. “But their range here will be pretty restricted, with the solar wind that star’s blasting out and all.”
Roman nodded, forcing the fears back. Chances were that Quentin and the lander were perfectly safe. “Okay, Yamoto, you know where their theoretical entry point was. Figure us a spiral search path in toward it and feed the numbers to the Handler.”
“Yes, sir,” she said. “Suggestion, Captain: instead of aiming for their Jump point, perhaps we should focus on the nearest section of the asteroid belt to that point.”
“The assumption being that all that exercise would have made Quentin hungry?” It was, Roman decided, a fair assumption. “Very good. Figure your course and let’s get started. Marlowe, you getting anything on our visitors yet?”
“It’s starting to come in, sir,” Marlowe told him. “Survey section computers are working on a—ah; here it is.” A fairly undetailed computer rendition of top, side, and bottom views appeared on Roman’s display.
Roman hunched forward to study them. Approximately eight meters across, the creatures were generally disk-shaped, with flat, roughly triangular wing-like appendages pointing outward in four directions from the edge, and with what looked like a single large feeding orifice and sensory ring taking up much of the flat underside. “Reminds me of a tailless manta ray,” he commented to no one in particular. “Rotated through ninety degrees to give it those other two wings. Odd that a creature that size has such a large feeding orifice.”
“I noticed that, too,” Marlowe nodded. “And you’ll note they’re staying solidly with us.”
Roman felt his forehead wrinkle as he called up a tactical display. Man o’ War had started its turn toward the asteroid belt now, and the creatures out there were indeed matching the maneuver. Staying directly in front of them, some twenty-seven kilometers out.