“What’s clear at once is that these things were never prepared en route. That means they have a home office where such things are made, for use in contacting strangers. Which in turn implies a lot of things. Oh, Kanak, I have a hunch, as though things I can’t see clearly are connecting up. Like the Zhumanor in the east and these people coming here—and I think the Navy should be in on it.
“I’m going to pluck up my nerve and get in touch with Captain Krimheen, he’s the big commander who brought our ship here, and he’s a live light. I should say there was some junior fleet officer went out to look them over for weapons, but he didn’t see anything. But what occurs to me is, if this is the state of their technology, would we recognize their weapons if we saw them? But it’s funny, what I’m concerned with isn’t weapons on that little ship. It’s what’s behind it all. To use a military term I learned, I think the problem here isn’t tactical. It’s strategic. Meaning bigger and deeper and maybe indirect.
“So there’s my bedtime story for you, Kanak dear. Can you see why I got mad? And who’d have thought, when we said good-bye for me to go study an obscure, possibly extinct language out east, that a week after I got home the language would be right here on our main landing-field!
“Rest well, get better quick, and love again to Leiloy and little Kanlie. Fondly, your friend Zilla.”
In Exec’s office at Human FedBase 900, the second part of that long-ago message begins to unreel on the voder. It’s Torrane.
“We were pretty depressed about Kathy. Shara and I collected her things and stowed them away. And we rolled in the gangway, and took off our wet work suits and hung them in the cabin to dry. The moisture in the air really felt good. And nothing else happened from outside, so we had chow and turned in early, taking one last look around the spaceport from the lock.
“I guess I didn’t tell you it’s all surrounded with a covered roadway, with roofed alleys out to the different hardstands. These people must be really leery of rain. So far we haven’t seen any change in the weather at all, just high cirrus. And there’s a lot of dust in the air that makes the sunsets something to see. We watched the lights come on. The port office down at the end looks busy; the military vessel only has standby lights.
“In the morning we start preparing for lift-off, securing the cabin, and taking the back-starfield holo strip out of the aft camera and threading it in the computer so we can go on automatic guidance in a hurry if need be. More of Kathy’s little stuff turns up. We still can’t believe she’s gone, stiff and cold back there... ’Scuse.
“Anyway, no outside action at all, until a little before noon, when a big staff car drives up. It has the thing we think is a government symbol on the doors, and also two little orange flags on the front, and the driver is sitting outside. Maybe big shots.
“Out gets a big male in orange uniform. He’s got up fancier than the other uniformed type, with a line of what could be medals. Then comes a smaller male in a plain uniform, with shoulder loops; he acts like an aide. And then a still smaller, red-colored alien dressed in some kind of silky outfit that suggests it’s a female. It turns out that’s right.
“She hops out and makes a beeline for the ship, and slaps the side with her tail. Pow!—we just have the lock cracked, see. And she calls out, ‘Herroo! Herroo, Herro? You come out? I come in!’
“By the gods, they’ve got a Galactic speaker here at last! We whip open the port and let down the gangway. She bounces straight up to meet Asch, holding out one of her top hands with a glove on it.
“ ‘Me Zillanoy,’ she announces, pointing to herself. ‘Zilla. Fee-male.’
“ ‘Hello, Zilla,’ we all say, and she gives a chortle, like it’s all great, and shakes all ’round, getting names. While this goes on I’m busy setting up another recorder. I figure there’s going to be an extended talk in pidgin-Galactic and I’ll put that on a separate record so you can have the whole thing verbatim. I’ll just give the gist of it here.
“She introduces the big alien as Something Krim-heen, probably like a title, ‘Captain,’ because she says, ‘Big chief fight-ship.’ Captain Asch offers to shake hands, but she slaps at him with her gloved hand. ‘No, no! Kifa! Bad” At this Shara points to the water flask in our mess rack and asks, ‘Kifa?’
“ ‘Yess,’ says the alien, ‘Wa-ta. Wa-ta bad na Ziello.’ I get it; it’s the moisture in our skins they fear.
“ ‘There’s something strange about her accent,’ Shara says. ‘And she knows the word chief. That isn’t in our Basic.’
“By this time we’re all in the ship, except for the aide, whom Captain Krimheen sends back to the car. We settle around the mess table as well as we can, with their size, and all those tails. And I lay out a ready-ref spread of the talking-pictures kit, and a big holo showing the whole Rift and both sides. All this seems to delight Zilla; she goes off in peals of laughter that sounds a lot like ours, although at first we thought she was choking. She seems like a nice girl. ‘Go-od! Class-ee!’ she says at the spread.
“Captain Asch starts off by introducing us formally as Humans from the Federation, coming in peace on an exploration mission. ‘We come look what here,’ he says, pointing to his eyes and all around. ‘Zeel-tan big!’
“But Zilla is staring at him with that big single eye, all giggles gone. So is Krimheen.
“ ‘Yoomanss? Zhumanor? No!’ she explodes. And gives us a blast I’ll try to reproduce. ‘You no Zhumanor! I know Zhumanss! Zhumanor kill people, come Comeno planetss, do bad things. Catch people, make dig di-monss, zara-navths, kill Comenor. Ziello ship come, catch two—three Zhumanor, no ship. Ziellor kill Zhumanor, look more. Look much Zhumanor, kill all! Look ship, Zhumanor fly, Ziellor catch. Look Zhumanor base, blow up—Pzeh! Zhumanor want shipss, want di-monss. Kill all Zhumanor! Yess!’
“Well, this about knocks us flat.
“ ‘That’s a Black Worlds accent,’ Shara exclaims.
“And that’s the key. After a lot of go-round, you’ll get it on the other cassette, we figure it out. Black Worlds Humans have been getting into them out east, capturing and killing an allied race called the Comenor. The Ziello have gone to their rescue, chasing and killing the Black Worlders. That’s where Zilla learned her scraps of Galactic; she’s sort of an official translator.
“Anyway, all Zeel-tan hates what they call the Zhumanor. At one point Zilla gets up and scoots out to the car—those hoppers can really travel when they’re in a hurry—and comes back with a folded, printed-looking kind of kidskin stuff—a daily paper. Two big photos front and center: one shows a clearly Human Black Worlds type with pointy hair, crouching and pointing a stunner at the camera. The photographer must have been right with the troops. The other is a pathetic huddle of corpses, or creatures nearly dead. They look partly like little Ziellos and partly like big rabbits.
“ ‘Comenor!’ says Zilla. ‘Zhu-man! Pfeh!’
“Well, with those photos in everybody’s hands, it’s obvious that if we’d landed in our natural forms, we’d probably have been lynched on sight. That must have been what Kathy and I picked up. Kathy saved our lives all right... But now what do we do?
“All this time, big Captain Krimheen never really softens up. He’s giving everything the hard look-over, and while Zilla’s talking, he gets up and studies our controls, and all the instrument banks. Captain Asch quietly keeps an eye on him.
“It’s also apparent that the two females can communicate much better than the rest of us, natural since Shara’s a linguist and I think Zilla is, too, and she’d talked with Galactic speakers before. (We give her the advanced movie-talkie cassette, too.) So Captain Asch lets Shara do the explaining, how we are good Humans from the good Federation, we don’t kill or enslave people and we don’t want diamonds or zaranaveths. And the Humans she’s seen aren’t from the Federation but from the Black Worlds outside, and we hate them, too.
“That gets a response. Zilla says thoughtfully, ‘I lis-ten, black pla-netss. Yess.’
“But
that sets her off on a new tack. ‘I think Zhumanor do bad things you,’ she exclaims. ‘I think you Yoomanor want come na Allowateera! Much people come na Allowateera —good, good! Why you talk fekey, talk you Zhumanor?’
“It takes all Shara’s skill to unscramble this. It seems Zilla now has the idea that we come from a race that’s been persecuted by the Black Worlders, and are seeking refuge in their alliance, or union, or whatever the Allowateera means. But the best Shara can do is to keep the question open whether our ‘Yooman’ is really the same as ‘Zhumanor,’ which is how they pronounce Black Worlders.
“Captain Asch is using a stylus on the big holo to show where the Federation is, and draw in our cross-Rift trip. But Krimheen takes the stylus and pinpoints some systems out east.
“ ‘Zhumanor here,’ he says. Then, watching Asch through his narrowed eye, he drags the stylus along from the east through the southern fringes of the Rift, to Zeel-tan. ‘You come na this, here, I think,’ he says dryly.
“ ‘No! No!’ we all say.
“But he just gets up and goes out and down the ramp. We see him conferring with his aide, who picks up what could be a caller in the car, in the flash I get of it.
“ ‘I don’t like this,’ mutters Asch. Neither do I.
“But when he comes back he seems quite affable, and makes a little speech. It’s an invitation to us to come into the city with him to meet some people we gather are government high officials. Zilla is enthusiastic. ‘You look Zieltan, is good! You look Allowateera big shits!’ she says in her hair-raising mix of Galactic and Black World lingo. ‘Good you come look!’
“Well, it’s pretty tempting after the endless time cooped up here. Captain Asch agrees to go, with Shara and me, leaving Dinger to guard the ship.
“We all troop out to the car with him, and Krimheen directs me to sit out in front with the driver. He’s being real cordial; he personally opens and closes the door for me.
“This disconcerts me so that it’s a minim before 1 realize he’s slammed the thing on the tip of my fake tail, which should be, I guess, excruciating. As quick as I can, I make to flinch and holler. But I was slow, slow. Does this big devil suspect it’s a fake? He gives no sign. But looking back, I seem to recall his nudging or bumping myself and Dinger quite a bit. I’d put it down to the cramped quarters... Oh, no—this is bad! How do I get word to Asch, closed in the back with him and the aide and the girls?
“And the car has started. In no time we’re in the middle of the port. It’s clouded up. Zilla is happily explaining something to Shara, when suddenly Captain Asch’s caller blats. I hear Dinger’s voice.
“ ‘Mayday! Mayday! They’re draining the fuel from our tank!’
“At that very instant, the driver beside me screams. Really screams. I see a couple of drops of rain have hit the windscreen. He slams to a stop and starts to pull up curtains.
“ ‘Everybody out! Run for it!’ shouts Asch.
“We tumble out and start pounding as fast as we can. But it would have been pathetic—those hoppers can fly. I didn’t dare look back, but I hear what sounds like a stun-bolt go by my ear. And some orange figures—troops—in the walkway to my right, start out into the field to cut us off.
“But—talk about crazy luck—the whole field lights up with a thunderclap and a blast of rain hits us. We race on. But I see the soldiers skid to a halt and hightail it back to shelter, where they start yanking out some rain-gear. No sounds of pursuit behind us.
“As we near the ship we see three or four more soldiers by the tubes, struggling into stuff. The gangway is half up. One of the soldiers tries a shot at us, but he’s half into his gear and I guess the rain is burning him. I can hear one actually crying out with pain. But one big fellow is about dressed. He blocks the way.
“For a convinced pacifist, our Captain Asch has a mean body-hook. He decks the big hopper, and Dinger drops the gangway right on top of him. We scoot up it and Asch throws himself into the pilot couch. Dinger has everything set. In two minim we’re digging air, clawing our way up off Zeel-tan—I hope for keeps.
“I waste a second hoping Zilla didn’t get burned too badly. By the time I can see down, the port’s almost gone. So is the rain, and the thunderhead is thinning out below. They seem to have these little thermal storms that come from nowhere and disperse at once.
“Dinger tells us that as soon as we were on our way, this squad of soldiers appeared and surrounded the ship. They located the outer fuel cap, opened it up, and stuck a hose down it so they could siphon without Dinger being able to use the choke-off. Dinger goes out to try to stop them, but the leader pulls a weapon and points it at his head, waving him to get back in.
“So he does—and grabs the waste-water hose and extends it to the port, below their line of sight. And he drenches them good, and hoses down the tank input area with suds. That way he saves most of the fuel—they were out to drain us dry, making the ship a neat jail for us. And of course that blessed shower came just in the nick.
“On the way up, their hose blew off, and we’re using the emergency choke until somebody can go EVA and replace the cap. We’ve lost a lot, though. We’ll have to do some figuring.
“We’ll send this as soon as we have a fuel estimate. And—Oh, oh, Dinger says the scope is showing some activity below, around that warship. Are they preparing to take off after us? This is going to take some close instrument work, we can’t hang around to watch. Rift-Runner temporarily out.”
Vast distances away and forward in time, the voder in Base 900 clicks. Off—On.
“It is now forty-five minim later. Take-off of a massive vessel confirmed. It looks as if we have that warship on our tail, with a thirty-nine-minim lead.
“And we have a fuel check. We do not, repeat not, have enough left to get back to Base. But we can make Beacon Alpha... In a way it doesn’t matter, because Captain Asch is not about to lead that battleship armed with planet-breakers into the Federation, if they follow us all that way. Of course, they may overhaul us earlier and grab us with that tractor-beam, which I guess is what Krimheen intends to do. If that happens, we’ll try to get off a message before we’re hauled in. We’ll set all kinds of alarms, and keep a pipe ready for update, but this may be the last you hear from Rift-Runner One.
“The best outcome, we figure, is that we reach Beacon Alpha ahead of him and then play an evade-and-wait game there, hoping you can send some kind of relief. Ah, the captain has a word.”
“Asch here,” says the deeper voice. “I am sorry to have to record that this peaceful exploration mission ends with us running for our lives from unprovoked hostilities I wish to point out that something has been seriously amiss in Sector Three hundred, who are supposed to keep a watch on the Black Worlds beyond. Their reports, when I left, stated that no off-planet activity was observed, and the population was supposed to be diminishing. But as near as I can judge, these Black Worlds raids on the race called Comenos were already starting. There is also the possibility that they were emigrating out to attractive worlds in that area, hence the, quotes, diminishing population. Those Black Worlds activities are poisoning the minds of people against Humans all along the south edge of the Rift, and maybe beyond. Distasteful as the thought is, I strongly suggest that the Black Worlders be reduced or eliminated—and steps taken to separate them from the Federation and Federation Humans, in alien minds.
“Now, when and if you come to our relief at Beacon Alpha, do not underestimate the probable Ziello strength there. Depending on the time elapsed, they may have called in reinforcements. Above all, I do not wish that more Human lives be endangered by our mission.
“Our plight “may well be judged my fault for having insisted that we were Human, in the face of the Ziellos’ apparent feelings, and our Sensitive’s earlier warning that Humanity was ‘hateful.’
“We will have forwarded all the useful information we have been able to obtain on this mission, especially if we succeed in doing as I intend, which is to include est
imates of fuel use, speed, and other flight characteristics and Ziello capabilities, in the event of our being overtaken and captured. No useful aim would be served by endangering people to rescue our persons, beyond the humanitarian one. And in considering this, I insist that you give weight to our desire to have no more Human deaths on our consciences.
“I will now turn this back to Lieutenants Sharana, Dingaiiar, and Torrane for their provisional and preferably private farewells... As to my own mate, now in cold-sleep, I believe she has recorded her wishes in the event of my nonreturn. “Lutho Asch, commanding, out.”
In FedBase 900, Pauna has caught Exec’s glance; she jumps up and switches off as the voder clicks.
“We can defer the rest until after receipt of any message reporting their capture,” says Exec quietly. “Or until so much time has elapsed that we must believe they are lost.”
All four Humans sit for a time in silence. Exec’s chin is on her fist, her expression grim. Just as Fred is about to dismiss Pauna and Realune, she speaks.
“Well... the worst outcome. I’ve already said all I feel. Fred, we’ll have to get at some careful planning tonight.
“Meanwhile, Pauna, I want you to run a careful check back to the times of sending and arrival of messages one, two, and three, to get an estimate of the time it will take Rift-Runner to get to Beacon Alpha. And Charts has their starfield holos for the whole trip; please drop by and warn them I’m going to be needing their best estimates of the same thing, plus—important—the distance from here to the beacon. Thus we’ll have two independent estimates. The one thing I don’t want is to have those people dodging a battleship or worse around Alpha for years, waiting for us to get to them.
“And Realune, ask Charts to make a set of close-ups of the Alpha region, so our rescue mission can locate them promptly if they’re not transmitting.”
The Starry Rift Page 19
