The Ship Who Saved the Worlds

by Anne McCaffrey

  The louvered doors flapped up one by one, revealing empty bays. Suddenly, a door rolled up, and the hoped-for containers were right in front of the video pickup. The inventory numbers for ion-drive engine parts were printed on the side and top of each case. Zonzalo and Glashton cheered. Mirina pointed at the corral of heavy-loaders in the foreground of the screen, and snapped an order into the headset mike. Bisman had seen them, too. His hand appeared in the lens, making an "OK" symbol.

  "All right, children, start loading 'em up!" The triumph in Bisman's voice came through the plasteel bubble helmet. Mirina felt smug, too. Even if they only sold half and kept the rest for running repairs and trade with the Thelerie, those engine parts should bring in enough to keep her fleet in space for another six months, at least.

  "Hold it! Drop your weapons!" A commanding voice boomed out of the walls. The raiders looked around. His arms held up from the elbows, Mirina's video-carrier turned slowly to face a squad of guards in dark blue uniforms. At their head was a tall, thin woman with silver hair. Her tunic was trimmed with more silver, including rows of medal flashes. From the confident manner with which she held her long-barreled slugthrower, Mirina guessed that some of the medals were for marksmanship. Some of Bisman's crew began to comply, bending over to set their guns on the ground. The raiders were outnumbered at least two to one. Mirina bit her lip. She dreaded what would surely follow.

  "Slowly . . ." the woman said, in a calm voice. "Slowly. Good. Now, hands above your heads."

  "Now!" Bisman shouted. As one, the raiders dropped flat on the floor. The screen went blank. "Fire!" Mirina could tell by the sounds, they were spraying the defenders with energy bolts. Shouts, then screams erupted, followed by the noise of scuffling. Individual cries rose above the noise.

  "What's happening?" Zonzalo asked. He had joined his sister to hang over the viewscreen. Mirina felt her blood drain away toward her feet. She swayed a little.

  "It's all going wrong," she said, and turned to Glashton. "Shake 'em up. Give Bisman and the others a chance to get out."

  The pilot nodded sharply, the muscles in his jaw twitching. He clawed at a series of controls, activating their secret weapon, the Slime Ball. The ship shuddered under their feet as it lit thrusters and pulled against the grapples. Always steering outward, so the return motion wouldn't yank the asteroid into their hull, Glashton zigzagged from one thruster to another.

  The effect as seen on the screen was frightening. The raider wearing the camera was now lying on his back. The ceiling shook, and the giant plates seemed to rub against one another. Mirina wondered if they would crack apart and fall.

  The crates of parts were vibrating, too, with every thrust of the ship. Inside their padding, the components were undoubtedly safe from impact damage even if they fell over, but if one landed on a human, there was nothing left to do but hold the funeral.

  While those in the ship had suffered a temporary loss of visuals, Bisman and his crew had regained their weapons. Between surges, the raiders managed to round up most of the defenders. A few blue-shirts lay, heads a-loll, on the floor; unconscious, Mirina hoped. Bisman and two of the others, kneeling, held the rest at gunpoint while the raiders mounted heavy-loaders and lifted stacks of the valuable crates. The stationmaster made one attempt to protest. Bisman nodded to one of his gunners, who ratcheted her weapon to a higher setting, and with one sweep slagged the metal floor in front of the silver-haired woman. The others gasped as the woman nearly stumbled forward into the red-hot mass. She stopped protesting, her hands in the air, but her eyes flashed hatred at Bisman. The loaders trundled out of the storeroom.

  Zonzalo ran to his station to open the cargo bay to receive the coming crates. He cackled to himself over each load as it passed the cameras.

  "Thruster modules," he said over his shoulder to the others. "Energy reburner pods! My God, do you know what those are worth? One new fuel tank, two, three—too bad there aren't a few more."

  "They'll all put oxygen in the tanks," Mirina said distantly. She was watching Bisman, worrying whether he would make some violent gesture at the end to keep the defenders from following. Glashton spoke over the helmet communication link, letting the raiders know that the violent jerking was over. The ship still swayed lightly from side to side from inertia, but everyone could stand up again.

  "Mi— Mirina, do not those boxes belong to the humans of the station-asteroid?"

  "They did," Mirina said tersely. "Now they are ours. We need them more. Your people need them to keep your space program running. Those humans would have refused to give them to us. This was the only way." But she had the picture in her mind of the uniformed men and women on the floor. Something about the ragdoll quality of the way they lay shouted at her that they were not unconscious, but dead. Bisman had overdone it again. Instead of a simple snatch and grab, they had more murders on their souls, not to mention their growing rap sheets in the Central Worlds computer bank.

  Glashton, responding to a triumphant cry from Zonzalo that the last of the heavy-loaders was on board and the raiding crew with it, sealed airlocks and blasted away. He gave an OK to Mirina, who yanked off her headset and squeezed herself with difficulty between the pilots' couches against the thrust of the engines. Her flesh flattened against her bones, and she shut her eyes.

  God, who'd ever have thought I'd come to this? she mused, wriggling her body down farther to avoid somersaulting out into the corridor. Fairhaired child of the corps, ace pilot, partner of . . . Damn it, stop thinking of him! She turned her concentration to the star tank, drilling the hologram with her gaze. The star, around which the asteroid circled, shrank swiftly until it was another undistinguished dot of light on the scope. Just like all the other stars around which orbited facilities, planets, and ships they'd robbed for goods to keep them going.

  "Shall I not go out there some day on a gathering mission?" Sunset asked Mirina, once they were clear of the heliopause.

  "No," she said shortly, pulling her attention away from the star tank. "Never. You must be kept safe in the ship."

  "But . . ."

  "But nothing," Mirina interrupted him. She leveled a finger at his weird, striped eyes. "You don't understand your place in the schematic. You're the backup we count on in case of emergency. If we lose every system but drives and life support, you can get us home again, even if our navicomp is a slagged ruin. You're the last line of defense we have. I'm not letting you go out there and risk your neck, not when thirty other lives are depending on you."

  "Oh." The young Thelerie pulled himself up, looking important and nervous and proud all at the same time. Mirina bit her tongue at having to tell him a lie, since sooner or later he'd meet up with others of his race who had joined the raiding parties after they'd apprenticed on the navigation board. But he was too young now. He'd be a liability to himself and the raiding crew.

  "My center is sure," he told her.

  "Good," Mirina sighed. "Keep it that way."

  Bisman handed his way into the control room. His armored suit, now dusty, bore the black streak of a laser shot that impacted over the sternum and skidded upward toward his left ear. He grinned triumphantly.

  "A megacredit run, at least," he crowed.

  "Is everyone back on board?" Mirina asked.

  "Yeah. Simborne and Mdeng bought it. They're cooling in the cargo bay with the containers."

  "How many injured?"

  "Not too many," Bisman said, offhandedly. "Fewer than the blue-shirts, that's for sure."

  "How many?" Mirina asked, and she knew he knew she wasn't asking for the list of wounded. Bisman pursed his lips and shrugged. "How many?"

  "Five? Six or seven at the most."

  "What?" she gasped. "What were you doing? Why did there have to be casualties?"

  Sunset glanced up, then hurriedly ducked his head behind his wing to avoid the leader's glare. He was shocked at how angry she was.

  "But you wanted those parts," Bisman complained. "They wouldn't give them up. Wh
at were we supposed to do?"

  "That electroshock weapon of yours has more than one setting, doesn't it?" Mirina asked nastily, stepping up to the big male. Bisman retreated a pace out of surprise.

  "He was going to pull an alarm! I had to stop him, quick! Damn, I'm tired of your jawing, Miri. We're partners, right? I make some of the decisions, right?"

  Mirina's brown-in-white eyes filled with water—tears—and she said huskily, "I had a partner once. He died. I don't want to hear about partners. We're co-leaders. They owe us the stuff, right?" she said, mocking him. "They owe us, but they don't owe us their lives."

  What she said made sense to Sunset, but Bisman appeared ready to disagree with her. Humans' flat faces were full of emotion, easy to read. Bisman's cheeks turned red, and his eyes stood out. Sunset thought for a moment he would strike Mirina, but he clenched his hands and left the room. Mirina's round face was set. She stared after the male, then closed her eyes. Sunset could see a slight vibration shake her body.

  "There's enough in this shipment, Miri," Zonzalo spoke up softly from his station. "We could settle down somewhere on our share. CW would never find us. How about the nice place we stopped before we were on Base Fifteen the last time? We're heading back that way. We could scope out a place, buy some land?"

  "No," Mirina said, opening her eyes. "I can't settle. I hate being groundbound. I prefer to be out here, in the blackness, away from people."

  Sunset spread the shoulder pinions of his wings in acknowledgement. He had caught her many times just staring out into the void, communing. Space spoke to her in a way he had always believed it did to the blessed ones. That was no doubt why she was so cross when he interrupted her. Zonzalo was easier to befriend. Mirina turned suddenly to him, and the young Thelerie jumped, wondering if she could read his thoughts.

  "Which way's your world, Sunset?" she asked. Without hesitation, he pointed toward his Center, and she sighted along his wing-finger.

  "We count on you, you know that," she said, wearily. Sunset nodded. "Good. Go take a rest."

  "You should, too, ma— Mirina." Then he dropped on all fours and hurried out of the control room, surprised by his own boldness. The woman stared after him.

  Zonzalo waved at his sister, and pointed at a light on his control board.

  "Message coming in," he said. Mirina stood over his shoulder and watched the brief transmission.

  "Route it to Bisman," she said at once. "He has to hear this."

  The co-leader was in the control room almost at once.

  "A ship penetrated the other P-sector system near Base Eight? We have to send word to have the others destroy it!"

  "We can't," Mirina said. "It's landed on the second planet. It's protected. Listen to this all the way through." She signalled to Zonzalo to play it back again.

  "The reptiles," Bisman said, exasperated. "The Slime. Damn it, I thought we had them bottled." He recorded a return message to their base. "Keep an eye out. If anything else happens, take appropriate action and notify us at once. Appropriate action," he repeated, with heavy emphasis, and one eye on Mirina. She glared at him, but held her tongue.

  Chapter Four

  For an interminable third day, Keff sat crosslegged on the floor of the Cridi assembly hall. He sat with his chin braced on one palm, elbow on knee, his wrist held to one side so Carialle could see everything that was going on from the miniaturized video pickup on his shirt front.

  "Another day of flapping lips and hands in the Main Bog," Keff murmured behind his hand. "I feel like Gulliver in Lilliput."

  The humidity was so uncomfortable that in direct countermand of orders from Central Worlds, Keff had stopped wearing uniforms. Instead, he was clad in his least disreputable exercise clothes, fabric made for sweating in. His hair had wound itself into curls, as it always did when it was damp, and he smelled musty. No one else seemed to notice the odor; perhaps his hosts simply couldn't distinguish it in the swamp miasma that hung over everything on this soggy world. Nor did the Cridi pay any attention to the drops running down his face. Like Tall Eyebrow and the others in the ship, some of them made a practice of wearing a film of water to keep their delicate skins from drying out. Others just counted on the ambient humidity, which, Keff thought, was more than sufficient.

  The room's decor reflected the possibility of wet delegates. The ceiling rolled back as easily to allow a passing downpour into the chamber as the view of a sunset or a rainbow. Low, comfortable seats shaped for either sitting upright, crouching, or lounging had soft, water-repellent covers; bright white light came from thick, enclosed bubbles hanging overhead; wooden tables were sealed in plastic, or perhaps made of a naturally resinous wood—Keff hadn't had a chance yet to examine one closely. Every time he approached a sitting group, perforce on hands and knees in the low-ceilinged room, stone-faced security frogs came out of the woodwork and herded him back to his spot.

  "At least they're allowing you to stay," Carialle said. "It's a foot in the door. You could be stuck out here with me, watching the swamp gurgle, and listening to the security guards babble formulae at each other."

  "I'm getting no forrader in advancing the cause of the Central Worlds," Keff said, forlornly watching Tall Eyebrow and the others, separated among three huge groups of Cridi, answering questions. Long Hand was perched in one of the chairs, waving her hands to get the attention of a pair of natives who were squabbling in high-pitched voices. "All during that muddy tour yesterday and the day before, I kept trying to tell them about the Central Worlds, but Big Voice over there kept saying the conclave hadn't yet discussed whether to allow input from an outworlder that would result in any kind of social engineering, when they've never met an outworlder before. Once they've discussed the topic, we have to wait until they've had input from every other city on the planet before proceeding. The final decision rests with the Council of Eight. I'm not allowed to influence anyone, particularly not with the fact of my being an alien. It's a bureaucracy. Our mission, to encounter strange new holdups and fascinating new ways to tie red tape where no frog has gone before."

  "Isn't anyone talking to you?"

  "Oh, yes, on and off, but more out of curiosity than diplomatic interest. I think," Keff said, smiling and making a seated bow to a passing delegate, "I'm serving a function all the same. The Cridi are learning not to be afraid of us. That's good. If they see me as a clown, I just have to coddle my own ego. The problem is they treat me rather like a talking dog, a non-sentient that is a wonder because it can pronounce recognizable words. I would be most concerned that they wouldn't take the Central Worlds seriously enough. There's no future alliance possible without respect."

  "Respect comes with knowledge. They are getting used to you. They've never seen anything like you—or me. As with humans, it sounds like they've run into very few, if any, sentient species beside their own. It would be like one of their dogs starting to talk, if they have dogs. So far I've only seen those blobbies and lizardings they keep for pets. In time, they'll get used to the idea that you do think for yourself. Be thankful that they don't think you're a monster. I was a little worried after that first group took off screaming. They could have burned out Frankenstein and his castle with Core power."

  "So they could." Keff shifted uncomfortably, pulling the folds of his sweatshirt away from his back. "I'd just prefer to be in the midst of things instead of merely observing. It looks like Tall Eyebrow could use my help." He glanced over at the group surrounding the Ozranian Frog Prince.

  "Tch, greedy. Look, they're friendly. You're getting an unprecedented privilege to have the first peep at an entirely new world, something anyone in Xeno would kill for."

  Keff brightened, sitting up straighter, ignoring the smell and the sog. "That's true. Alien Outreach chose us. It's us, partner, first and foremost, no matter what. I want to see everything. And I need to look sharp. I keep missing details."

  "Well, that's what I'm here for," Carialle said complacently. "My drives haven't stopped humming fo
r the last eighty hours. Just ask your friendly neighborhood shellperson for a free, money-back guaranteed review."

  Keff grinned. "If only it was that easy. It has to be in my head, too. I wish I had extended memory banks." There was so much that was different in the way the Cridi lived on their homeworld than on Ozran. Isolated as he was, he felt as if he was only one more fact away from sensory overload.

  At first he had wondered if the Cridian amphibioids had abandoned their amulet power system, since no amulets were in evidence. Carialle had been the first to point out the circuits, like fine gold filigree, that were either worn on, or bonded to the ends of the Cridi's long fingers. It was a tremendous advancement in the technology. To access Core power, the user merely positioned his or her hand, as if inserting the fingertips into the niches on a device, the way humans would use a virtual-reality glove, and they were in touch, so to speak, with the Core. Keff knew that Tall Eyebrow and the other Ozranian visitors were uncomfortable using their antique amulets in front of the homeworlders, but he'd assured them that they should be proud to display them, as symbols, if nothing else. The amulets represented hard-won equality after years of deprivation. Besides, their race had a natural prediliction for telekinesis, unlike their newfound allies, the humans. That was an advantage that no archaic equipment could devalue. It didn't dispel the Ozranians' discomfort entirely, but it helped. Keff would have given anything to be able to use an amulet, archaic or no, to be dry just for an hour. His boots were beginning to smell moldy. He considered hiking back to the ship through the rain to get a pair of sandals.

  Carialle broke into his reverie.

  "Oh, look. Company's coming. One of the 'eight great.' "

  Keff glanced up. One of the dignitaries from the Cridi delegation made her way through the crowd and stopped before Keff. She wore a red cloak that was secured at her throat and wrists with gold bands instead of the silver bangles she had worn to meet the ship. Keff guessed from his limited knowledge of Cridi biology that she was fairly young, but still considered an adult. He tried to straighten the crumples out of his shirt.