Then, as he swam between openings in the weedscape, the battle seemed to take off without him. He heard sounds of combat and knew his pursuers had come into contact with another party of ET stragglers.
Tom had left then, underwater, in search of other mischief to do.
The battle noise drifted away from his present position. From his brief glimpse an hour ago, this particular skirmish seemed to involve a half-dozen Gubru and three battered, balloon-tired rover machines of some type. Tom hadn’t been able to tell if they were robots or crewed, but they had seemed unable to adapt to the tricky surface, for all of their firepower.
He listened for a minute, then coiled his tube and put it away in his waistband. He rose quietly to the surface of the tiny pool and risked lifting his eyes to the level of the interwoven loops of weed.
In his mosquito raids, he had moved toward the eggshell wreck. Now he saw that it was only a few hundred meters away. Two smoking ruins told of the fate of the wheeled machines. As he watched, first one, then the other slowly sank out of sight. Three slime-covered Gubru, apparently the last of their party, struggled over the morass toward the floating ship. Their feathers were plastered against their slender, hawk-beaked bodies. They looked desperately unhappy.
Tom rose up and saw flashes of more fighting to the south.
Three hours before, a small Soro scoutship had come diving in, strafing all in sight, until a delta-winged Tandu atmospheric fighter swooped out of the clouds to intercept it. They blasted away at each other, harassed by small arms fire from below, until they finally collided in a fiery explosion, falling to the sea in a tangled heap.
About an hour later the story repeated itself. This time the participants were a lumbering Pthaca rescue-tender and a battered spearship of the Brothers of the Night. Their wreckage joined the smoky ruins which slowly subsided in every direction.
No food, no place to hide, and the only race of fanatics I really want to see is the one not represented out here in this dribble-dribble charnel house.
The message bomb pressed under his waistband. Again, he wished he knew whether or not to use it.
Gillian has to be worried by now, he thought. Thank God, at least she’s safe.
And the battle’s still going on. That means there’s still time. We’ve still got a chance.
Yes. And dolphins like to go for long walks along the beach.
Ah, well. Let’s see if there’s some more trouble I can cause.
T
he Soro, Krat, cursed at the strategy schematic. Her clients took the precaution of backing away while she vented her anger by tearing great rips out of the vletoor cushion.
Four ships lost! To only one by the Tandu! The recent battle had been a disaster!
And meanwhile, the sideshow down at the planet’s surface was bleeding away her small support craft in ones and twos!
It seemed that tiny remnants of all of the defeated fleets, stragglers that had hidden out on moons or planetoids, must have decided the Earthlings were hiding near that volcano down in Kithrup’s mid-northern latitudes. Why did they think that?
Because surely nobody would be fighting over nothing at all, would they? The skirmish had a momentum all its own by now. Who would have thought that the defeated alliances would have hidden away so much firepower for one last desperate attempt at the prize?
Krat’s mating claw flexed in wrath. She couldn’t afford to ignore the possibility that they were right. What if the distress call had, indeed, emanated from the Earthlings’ ship? No doubt this was some sort of fiendish human distraction, but she could not risk the chance that the fugitives actually were there.
“Have the Thennanin called yet?” she snapped.
A Pil from the communications section bowed quickly and answered. “Not yet, Fleet-Mother, though they have pulled away from their Tandu allies. We expect to hear from Buoult soon.”
Krat nodded curtly. “Let me know the very instant!” The Pil assented hurriedly and backed away.
Krat went back to considering her options. Finally, it came down to deciding which damaged and nearly useless vessel she could spare from the coming battle for one more foray to the planet’s surface.
Briefly, she toyed with the idea of sending a Thennanin ship once the upcoming alliance against the now-pre-eminent Tandu was consummated. But then she decided that would be unwise. Best to keep the priggish, sanctimonious Thennanin up here where she could keep her eyes on them. She would choose one of her own small cripples to go.
Krat contemplated a mental image of the Earthlings—dough-skinned, spindly, shaggy-maned humans, who were sneakiness embodied—and their weird, squawking, handless dolphin clients.
When they are finally mine, she thought, I will make them regret the trouble they are causing me.
W
e’ve arrived.
For the last four hours I’ve been the matriarch of a madhouse. Thank heaven for Hannes and Tsh’t and Lucky Kaa and all the beautiful, competent fen we’ve missed for so long. I hadn’t realized until we arrived just how many of the best had been sent ahead to prepare our new home.
There was an ecstatic reunion. Fen dashed about bumping each other and making a racket that I kept telling myself the Galactics couldn’t really hear … The only real pall came when we thought about the absent members of our crew, the six missing fen, including Hikahi, Akki, and Keepiru. And Tom, of course.
It wasn’t until later that we discovered that Creideiki was missing, also.
After a brief celebration, we got to work. Lucky Kaa took the helm, almost as sure and steady as Keepiru would have been, and piloted Streaker along a set of guide rails into the cavity in the Thennanin wreck. Giant clamps came down and girdled Streaker, almost making her part of the outer shell. It’s a snug fit. Techs immediately started integrating the sensors and tuning the impedances of the stasis flanges. The thrusters are already aligned. Carefully disguised weapons ports have been opened, in case we have to fight.
What an undertaking! I never would have thought it possible. I can’t believe the Galactics will expect anything like this. Tom’s imagination is astounding.
If only we would hear his signal …
I’ve asked Toshio to send Dennie and Sah’ot here by sled. If they take a direct route at top speed they should arrive in a little over a day. It’ll take that long, at least, to finish setting up here.
It really is vital we get Dennie’s notes and plasma samples. If Hikahi reports in, I’ll ask her to stop at the island for the Kiqui emissaries. Second only to our need to escape with our data is our duty to the little amphibians, to save them from indenture to some crazy race of Galactic patrons.
Toshio chose to stay to keep an eye on Takkata-Jim and Metz, and to meet Tom, should he show up. I think he added that last part knowing it would make it impossible for me to refuse … Of course, I knew he’d make the offer. I was counting on it.
It only makes me feel worse, using him to keep Takkata-Jim in check. Even if our ex-vice-captain disappoints me, and behaves himself, I don’t know how Toshio’s to get back here in time, especially if we have to take off in a hurry.
I’m learning what they mean by the agony of command.
I had to pretend shocked surprise when Toshio told me about the mini-bombs Charlie Dart stole out of the armory. Toshio offered to try to get them back from Takkata-Jim, but I’ve forbidden it. I told him we’d take our chances.
I couldn’t take him into my confidence. Toshio is a bright young man, but he has no poker face.
I think I have things timed right. If only I were certain.
The damned Niss is calling me again. This time I’ll go see what it wants.
Oh, Tom. Would you, if you were here, have misplaced an entire ship’s captain? How can I forgive myself for letting Creideiki go out there alone?
He seemed to be doing so well, though. What in Ifni’s crap-shoot went wrong?
E
arly in the morning, he was at his console at the water’s edge, happily conversing with his new robot. It was already down a kilometer, planting tiny detectors in the drill-tree shaft wall along the way.
Charles Dart mumbled cheerfully. In a few hours he would have it down as deep as the old one, the next-to-worthless probe he had abandoned. Then, after a few more tests to verify his theories about local crustal formations, he could start finding out about bigger questions, like what Kithrup the planet was like.
Nobody, but nobody, could stop him now!
He remembered the years he had spent in California, in Chile, in Italy, studying earthquakes as they happened, working with some of the greatest minds in geophysical science. It had been exciting. Still, after a few years he had begun to realize that something was wrong.
He had been admitted into all the right professional societies, his papers were greeted with both high praise and occasional vehement rejection—both reactions far preferred by any decent scientist over yawns. There was no lack of prestigious job offers. But there came a time when he suddenly wondered where the students were.
Why didn’t graduate students seek him out as an advisor? He saw his colleagues besieged by eager applicants for research assistantships, yet, in spite of his list of publications, his widely known and controversial theories, only the second-raters came to him, the students searching more for grant support than a mentor. None of the bright young mels and fems sought him out as an academic patron.
Of course, there had been a couple of minor cases in which his temper had gotten the better of him, and one or two of his students had departed acrimoniously, but that couldn’t account for the doldrums in the pedagogical side of his career, could it?
Slowly, he came to think that it must be something else. Something … racial.
Dart had always held himself aloof from the uplift obsession of many chimps-either the fastidious respectfulness of the majority toward humans, or the sulking resentfulness of a small but vocal minority. A couple of years ago he began paying attention however. Soon he had a theory. The students were avoiding him because he was a chimpanzee!
It had stunned him. For three solid months he dropped everything to study the problem. He read the protocols governing humanity’s patronhood over his race, and grew outraged over the ultimate authority Mankind held over his species—until, that is, he read about uplift practice in the galaxy at large. Then he learned that no other patron gave a four-hundred-year-old client race seats on its high councils, as Mankind did.
Charles Dart was confused. But then he thought about that word “gave.”
He read about humanity’s age-old racial struggles. Had it really been less than half a millennium since humans contrived gigantic, fatuous lies about each other simply because of pigment shades, and killed millions because they believed their own lies?
He learned a new word, “tokenism,” and felt a burning shame. That was when he volunteered for a deep space mission, determined not to return without proof of his academic prowess—his skill as a scientist on a par with any human!
Alas that he had been assigned to Streaker, a ship filled with squeaking dolphins, and water. To top it off; that smugpot Ignacio Metz immediately started treating him like another of his unfinished experimental half-breeds!
He’d learned to live with that. He cosied up with Metz. He would bear anything until the results from Kithrup were announced.
Then they’ll stand up as Charles Dart enters rooms! The bright young human students will come to him. They’ll all see that he, at least, was no token!
Charlie’s deep thoughts were interrupted by sounds from the forest nearby. He hurriedly slapped the cover plate over a set of controls in a lower corner of his console. He was taking no chances with anyone finding out about the secret part of his experiment.
Dennie Sudman and Toshio Iwashika emerged from the village trail, talking in low voices, carrying small bundles. Charlie busied himself with detailed commands to the robot, but cast a surreptitious eye toward the humans, wondering if they suspected anything.
But no. They were too much into each other, touching, caressing, murmuring. Charlie snorted under his breath at the human preoccupation with sex, day in, day out; but he grinned and waved when they glanced his way.
They don’t suspect a thing, he congratulated himself, as they waved back, then turned to their own concerns. How lucky for me they’re in love.
“I still want to stay. What if Gillian’s wrong? What if Takkata-Jim finishes converting the bombs early?”
Toshio shrugged. “I still have something he needs.” He glanced down at the second of two sleds in the pool, the one that had belonged to Tom Orley. “Takkata-Jim won’t take off without it.”
“Exactly!” Dennie was emphatic. “He’d need that radio, or the ETs would blast him to bits before he could negotiate. But you’ll be all alone! That fin is dangerous!”
“That’s just one of many reasons I’m sending you away right now.”
“Is this the big, macho mel talking?” Dennie tried sarcasm, but was unable to put much bite into it.
“No.” Toshio shook his head. “This is your military commander talking. And that’s that. Now let’s get these last samples loaded. I’ll escort you and Sah’ot a few miles before we say good-bye.”
He bent over to pick up one of the parcels, but before he touched it he felt a hand in the small of his back. A sharp push threw him of balance, flailing.
“Denneee!” He caught a glimpse of her, grinning devilishly. At the last moment his left hand darted out and caught hers. Her laughter turned into a shriek as he dragged her after him into the water.
They came up, spluttering, between the sleds. Dennie cried out in triumph as she grabbed the top of his head with both hands and dunked him. Then she leapt half out of the water as something goosed her from behind.