Ship Who Searched

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Right. Possible eccentric orbit, probably extreme tilt, third-in Terra-type position, and no satellites.” Lars sounded pleased. “I’ll get Survey on it.”

  “What about the likely range of the ship that left him?” Tia asked. “Check with CenSec and Military; the docks at Yamahatchi had to have external specs and so forth on that ship. What kind of fuel did they take on, if any? Docks should have external pictures. Military ought to be able to guess at the range, based on that. That should give us a search area.”

  “Good.” Kenny made notes. “I’ve got another range—how long it probably took for our victim to come down with the disease once he was infected. Combine that one with yours, and we should have a sphere around Yamahatchi.”

  “Kenny, he couldn’t possibly have shown any symptoms while he was in space—they’d have pitched him out the airlock,” Tia pointed out. “That means he probably went through incubation while they were in FTL and only showed symptoms once they hit port.”

  “Right. I’ll have that calculated for you and get you the survey records for that sphere, then it’ll be up to you and the other teams.” Kenny signed off, and Alex swiveled his chair to face Tia’s column.

  “There’s an information lag for that area,” Alex pointed out. “Yamahatchi is on the edge of known space. Survey is still working out there—except for really critical stuff, it’s going to take weeks, months, even years for information to make it here. We need a search net, not just a couple of search teams.”

  “So—how about if we have Kenny call in not just Medical Services, but Decontamination?” she asked. “They don’t have any BB teams either, but they do have the AI drones and the med teams assigned to them. They can run the net as well as we can. Slower, but that may not be so bad.”

  “I’ll get on it,” Alex replied instantly. “He can be mobilizing every free ship and team they’ve got while we compute the likely targets.”

  “And Intelligence!” she added, as Alex got back on the horn with Kenny and his team. “Get Kenny to get in touch with Intel, and have their people inside that sphere be on the watch for more victims, rumors of plague or of plague ships, or ships that have mysteriously lost half their crews!”

  That would effectively increase their available eyes and ears a hundred-thousandfold.

  “Or of ships that vanish and don’t come into port,” Alex said grimly. “Somewhere along the line that so-called tramp freighter is going to do just that; go into hyper and never come out again. Or come out and drift with no hand on the helm.”

  Tia wished she could still shiver; as it was, she felt rather as if her hull temperature had just dropped to absolute zero.

  No computer could match the trained mind for being able to identify or discard a prospect with no data other than the basic survey records. Alex and Tia each took cone-shaped segments of the calculated sphere and began running their own kind of analysis on the prospects the computer search came up with.

  Some were obvious; geologic instability that would uncover or completely bury the caches unpredictably. Weather that did not include snow, weather that did not include rain. Occupied planets with relatively thick settlements, or planets with no continents, only tiny island chains.

  Some were not so obvious. Terrain with no real landmarks or landmarks subject to change. Terrain with snow and rain, but with snow piling up twelve feet thick in the winter; too deep to dig in. The original trove must have been uncovered by accident—perhaps during the construction of a rudimentary base—or by someone just outside, kicking around dirt.

  Places with freelance mining operations were on the list; agri-colonies weren’t. Places marked by the Institute for investigation were, places with full Institute teams weren’t. While Tia would not have put it past someone with problems to sell out to smugglers, she didn’t think that they’d care to cover up a contagious disease this hideous.

  As soon as they finished mapping a cone, it went out to a team to cover. They had another plan in mind for themselves: covering free-trade ports, looking for another victim. They could cover the ports a lot faster than any of the AI or softperson-piloted ships; the only one faster would have been someone with a Singularity Drive. Since those were all fully occupied—and since, as yet, they had only one victim and not a full-scale plague in progress—there was no chance of getting one reassigned to this duty. So AH One-Oh-Three-Three would be doing what it could—and trying to backtrack the “freighter” to its origin point.

  They were running against the clock, and everyone on the project knew it. If this disease got loose in a large, space-going population, the chances of checking it before millions died were slender.

  “Alex,” Tia called for the third time, raising the volume of her voice a little more. This time he answered, even though he didn’t turn his dark-circled eyes away from his work.

  “What, m’love?” he said absently, his gaze glued to a topographical map on the screen before him, despite the fact that he could hardly keep his eyes open.

  She overrode the screen controls, blanking the one in front of him. He blinked and turned to stare at her with weary accusation.

  “Why did you do that?” he asked. “I was right in the middle of studying the geography—”

  “Alex!” she said with exasperation. “You hadn’t changed the screen in half an hour; you probably hadn’t really looked at it in all that time. Alex, you haven’t eaten anything in over six hours, you haven’t slept in twenty, and you haven’t bathed or changed your clothes in forty-eight!”

  He rubbed his eyes and peered up at the blank screen. “I’m fine,” he protested feebly.

  “You’re not,” she countered. “You can hardly hold your head up. Look at your hand shake! Coffee is no substitute for sleep!”

  He clenched his fist to stop the trembling of his hand. “I’m fine,” he repeated, stubbornly.

  She made a rude noise and flashed her screens at him, so that he winced. “There, see? You can’t even control your reactions. If you don’t eat, you’ll get sick, if you don’t sleep, you’ll miss something vital, and if you don’t bathe and change your clothes I’m turning you over to Decontam.”

  “All right, love, all right,” he sighed, reaching over and patting her column. “Heat me up something; I’ll be in the galley shortly.”

  “How shortly?” she asked sharply.

  “As long as it takes for a shower and fresh clothes.” He pried himself up out of his chair and stumbled for his room. A moment later, she heard the shower running—and when she surreptitiously checked, she discovered that as she had suspected, he was running it on cold.

  Trying to wake up, hmm? Not when I want you to relax. She overrode the controls—not bringing it all the way up to blood-heat, but enough that he wasn’t standing in something one degree above sleet. It must have worked; when he stumbled out into the galley, freshly clothed, he was yawning.

  She fed him food laden with tryptophan; he was too tired to notice. And even though he punched for it, he got no coffee, only relaxing herbal teas.

  He patted her auxiliary console—this time as if he were patting someone’s hand to get her attention. He’d been doing that a lot, lately—that and touching her column like the arm of an old and dear friend. “Tia, love, don’t you realize we’re almost through with this? Two cones to go—three if you count the one I’m working on now—”

  “Which I can finish,” she said firmly. “I don’t need to eat, and I only need three hours of DeepSleep in twenty-four. Yes, I knew. But you aren’t going to get teams out there any faster by killing yourself—and if you work yourself until you’re exhausted, you are going to miss what might be the important clue.”

  “But—” he protested, and was stopped by a yawn.

  “No objections,” she replied. “I can withhold the data, and I will. No more data for another eight hours. Consider the boards locked, brawn. I’m overriding you, and if I have to, I’ll get Medical to second me.”

  He was too tired to b
e angry, too tired even to object. In the past several days he had averaged about four hours in each sleep period, with nervous energy waking him long before he should have reawakened. But the strain was taking its toll. She had the feeling he was going to get that eight solid hours this time, whether or not he intended to.

  “You aren’t going to accomplish anything half-conscious,” she reminded him. “You know what they say in the Academy; do it right, or don’t do it.”

  “I give up.” He threw his hands up in the air and shook his head. “You’re too much for me, lover.”

  And with that, he wandered back into his cabin and fell onto his bunk, still fully clothed. He was asleep the moment he was prone.

  She did something she had never done before; she continued to watch him through her eye in his cabin, brooding over him, trying to understand what had been happening over the past several days.

  She had forgotten that she was encased in a column, not once, but for hours at a time. They had talked and acted like—like ordinary people, not like brain and brawn. Somehow, during that time, the unspoken, unconscious barriers between them had disappeared.

  And he had called her “love” or “lover” no less than three times in the past ten minutes. He’d been calling her by that particular pet name quite a bit.

  He had been patting her console or column quite a bit, these past few days—as if he were touching someone’s hand to gain attention, soothe, or emphasize a point.

  She didn’t think he realized that he was doing either of those things. It seemed very absentminded, and very natural. So she wasn’t certain what to make or think of it all. It could simply be healthy affection; some people used pet names very casually. Up until now, Alex hadn’t, but perhaps until now he hadn’t felt comfortable enough with her to do so. How long had they known each other anyway? Certainly not more than a few months—even though it felt like a lifetime.

  No, she told herself firmly. It doesn’t mean a thing. He’s just finally gotten to know me well enough to bring all his barriers down.

  But the sooner they completed their searches and got out into space again, the sooner things would go back to normal.

  Let’s see if I can’t do two of those three cones before he wakes up. . . .

  Predictably, the port that the mysterious tramp freighter had filed as its next port of call did not have any record of it showing up. Tia hadn’t really expected it to; these tramps were subject to extreme changes of flight plan, and if it had been a smuggler, it certainly wouldn’t log where it expected to go next.

  She just hoped that it had failed to show up because the captain had lied—and not because they were drifting out in space somewhere. She let Alex do all the talking; he was developing a remarkable facility for playing a part and very cleverly managed to tell the absolute truth while conveying an impression that was entirely different from the whole truth.

  In this case, he left the station manager with the impression that he was an agent for a collection agency—one that meant to collect the entire ship, once he caught up with it

  Alex shut down the com to the station manager, and turned his chair to face her screen and the plots of available destinations.

  “How do you do that?” she asked, finally. “How do you make them think something entirely different from the real truth?”

  He laughed, while she pulled up the local map and projected it as a holographic image. “I’ve been in theater groups for as long as I can remember, once I got into school. My other hobby, the one I never took too seriously, even though they said I was pretty good. I just try to imagine myself as the person I want to be, and figure out what of the truth fits that image.”

  “Well,” she said, as they studied the ship’s possible destinations, “if I were a smuggler, where would I go?”

  “Lermontov Station, Presley Station, Korngold Station, Tung Station,” he said, ticking them off on his fingers. “They might turn up elsewhere, but the rest all have Intel people on them; we’ll know if they hit there.”

  “Provided whoever Intel has posted there is worth his paycheck. Why Presley Station?” she asked. “That’s just an asteroid-mining company headquarters.”

  “High Family in residence,” he replied, leaning back in his chair, and lacing his fingers behind his head. “Money for valuable artifacts. Miners with money—and not all of them are rock-rats.”

  “I thought miners were all—well, fairly crude,” she replied.

  He shook his head. “Miners are people, and there are all kinds out there. There are plenty of miners looking to make a stake—and some of them outfit their little tugs in ways that make a High Family yacht look plain. They have money for pretties, and they don’t much care where the pretty came from. And one more thing; the Presley-Lee y Black consortium will buy ore hauls from anyone, including tramp prospectors, so we have a chance that someone may actually stumble on the trove itself. We can post a reward notice there, and it’ll be seen.”

  “Along with a danger warning,” she told him. “I only hope these people believe it. Lermontov first, then Tung, then Presley?”

  “Your call, love,” he replied comfortably, sending a carefully worded notice to the station newsgrid. They didn’t want to cause a panic, but they did want people to turn in any clue to the whereabouts of the freighter. And they didn’t want anyone infected along the way. So the news notice said that the ship in question might have been contaminated with Anthrax Three, a serious, but not fatal, variant of old Terran anthrax.

  He finished posting his notice, and turned back to her. “You’re the pilot. I’m just along for the ride.”

  “It’s the most efficient vector,” she replied, logging her flight plan with Traffic Control. “Three days to Lermontov, one to Tung, a day and a half to Presley.”

  Despite Alex’s disclaimer that he was only along for the ride, the two of them did not spend the three days to Lermontov idle. Instead, they sifted through all the reports they’d gotten so far from the other teams, looking for clues or hints that their mystery ship could have made port anywhere else. Then, when they hit Lermontov, Alex went hunting on-station.

  This time his cover was as a shady artifact dealer; looking for entire consignments on the cheap. There were plenty of people like him, traders with negotiable ethics, who would buy up a lot of inexpensive artifacts and forge papers for them, selling them on the open market to middle-class collectors who wanted to have something to impress their friends and bosses with their taste and education. Major pirates wouldn’t deal with them—at least, not for the really valuable things. But crewmen, who might pick up a load of pottery or something else not worth the bigger men’s time, would be only too happy to see him. In this case, it was fortunate that Tia’s hull was that of an older model without a Singularity Drive; she looked completely nondescript and a little shabby, just the sort of thing such a man would lease for a trip to the Fringe.

  Lermontov was a typical station for tramp freighters and ships of dubious registration. Not precisely a pirate station, since it was near a Singularity, it still had station managers who looked the other way when certain kinds of ships made port, docks that accepted cash in advance and didn’t inquire too closely into papers, and a series of bars and restaurants where deals could be made with no fear of recording devices.

  That was where Alex went—wearing one of his neon outfits. Tia was terrified that he would be recognized for what he was, but there was nothing she could do about it. He couldn’t even wear a contact-button; the anti-surveillance equipment in every one of those dives would short it out as soon as he crossed the threshold. She could only monitor the station newsgrids, look for more clues about “their” ship, and hope his acting ability was as good as he thought it was.

  Alex had learned the trick of drinking with someone when you wanted to stay sober a long time ago. All it took was a little sleight of hand. You let the quarry drain his drink, switch his with yours, and let him drain the second, then call for another roun
d. After three rounds, he wouldn’t even notice you weren’t drinking, particularly not when you were buying the drinks.

  Thank the spirits of space for a MedService credit account.

  He started out in the “Pink Comet,” whose neon decorations more than outmatched his jumpsuit. He learned quickly enough there that the commodities he wanted weren’t being offered—although the rebuff was friendly enough, coming from the bartender after he had already stood the whole house a round. In fact, the commodities being offered were more in the line of quasi-legal services, rather than goods. The bartender didn’t know who might have what he wanted—but he knew who would know and sent Alex on to the “Rimrunners.”

  Several rounds later, he suffered through a comical interlude where he encountered someone who thought he was buying feelie-porn and sex-droids, and another with an old rock-rat who insisted that what he wanted was not artifacts but primitive art. “There’s no money in them arty-facts no more,” the old boy insisted, banging the table with a gnarled fist. “Them accountants don’t want arty-facts, the damn market’s got glutted with ’em! I’m tellin’ ya—primy-tive art is the next thing!”

  It took Alex getting the old sot drunk to extract himself from the man—which might have been what the rock-rat intended in the first place. By then he discovered that the place he really wanted to be was the “Rockwall.”

  In the “Rockwall” he hit paydirt, all right—but not precisely what he had been looking for.

  The bar had an odd sort of quiet ambience; a no-nonsense non-human bartender, an unobtrusive bouncer who outweighed Alex by half again his own weight, and a series of little enclosed table-nooks where the acoustics were such that no sound escaped the table area. Lighting was subdued, the place was immaculately clean, the prices not outrageously inflated. Whatever deals went on here, they were discreet.

  Alex made it known to the bartender what he was looking for and took a seat at one of the tables. In short order, his credit account had paid for a gross of Betan funeral urns, twenty soapstone figurines of Rg’kedan snake-goddesses, three exquisite little crystal Kanathi skulls that were probably worth enough that the Institute and Medical would forgive him anything else he bought, and—of all bizarre things to see out here—a Hopi kachina figure of Owl Dancer from old Terra herself. The latter was probably stolen from another crewman; Alex made a promise to himself to find the owner and get it back to him—or her. It was not an artifact as such, but it might well represent a precious bit of tribal heritage to someone who was so far from home and tribe that the loss of this kachina could be a devastating blow.