Warhorse

by Timothy Zahn

  Roman forced himself to look…and actually, it wasn’t too bad. Provided he remembered that the hairless, piglet-sized creature was supposed to look that way; and that it was safely asleep, not dead; and that its wired-up brain neurons had as much sheer computing capability as the Cordonale’s best mainframes.

  The Tampies’ computer, he knew, used basically the same arrangement. Not so simple, but still elegant.

  “Sso-ngii,” Rrin-saa said, raising both hands toward the helmeted Tampy. “He speaks with Pegasunninni.”

  “Pega—? Ah,” Roman interrupted himself. Pegasunninni would be the Tampies’ name for the space horse: Pegasus, with the proper identifying suffix tacked on. “And the other is Hhom-jee?” he added, hoping he was pulling the proper neckerchief color scheme out of memory.

  “That is correct,” Rrin-saa confirmed. “He is resting.”

  “Ah,” Roman said again, eying the humming Tampy with interest. Tampy sleep was both more physically active than the human equivalent and also came at semi-irregular intervals around the clock. A far cry from the normal terrestrial circadian rhythm, and one that had helped to poison quite a few of the early attempts at interspecies cooperation. Human workers could never quite believe the Tampies weren’t simply goofing off, and Roman would bet that the human habit of going into a coma for a straight thirty percent of the day had been equally annoying to the Tampies. Though no one knew for sure; the Tampies had never discussed the matter. “I gather he’s here to take over when Sso-ngii needs sleep?”

  “That is correct,” Rrin-saa said. He repeated his earlier two-handed gesture, this time toward Hhom-jee. “There is one other who talks to Pegasunninni.”

  “Yes, I remember that there were three Handlers listed on the crew roster.” Roman nodded toward Sso-ngii and the hairless caged animal. It wasn’t so bad the second time. “I’d like to take a closer look at the amplifier helmet, if it wouldn’t disturb him.”

  “Do not approach.”

  Roman paused, halfway into a step. “Why not?”

  “He speaks with Pegasunninni,” Rrin-saa said.

  “And…?”

  “You are a predator,” Sso-ngii said.

  Roman started; he hadn’t realized the Handler was paying any attention to the conversation. “Is that why we haven’t been able to control space horses? Or even to keep them alive in captivity?”

  “I do not know,” Sso-ngii said. “I know that humans sometimes have bothered space horses; that is all.”

  Roman pursed his lips. “Um.”

  For a moment he hesitated, at a loss for something to say or do. He turned away from Sso-ngii; and as he did so, the repeater instruments caught his eye, and he stepped over for a closer look. They were labeled in Tampy script, of course, but his crash course in things Tamplisstan had included some of that, and it took only a minute to locate the ones he was interested in. “I’d better be getting back to the bridge,” he told Rrin-saa. “We’re getting close to our scheduled Jump point.”

  “I understand,” Rrin-saa said. “Rro-maa…this voyage is of great importance to the Tamplissta. We understand you; you do not understand us. This failing of harmony cannot continue.”

  Roman nodded. “I agree,” he said. “We’ll work together on this, Rrin-saa. With luck…maybe we can find some of that understanding for my people.”

  “That is the Tamplisstan hope. For if not…” He touched fingers to ear, and left the sentence unfinished.

  “I understand,” Roman said.

  If not, Ferrol would likely get the war he wanted.

  They still had nearly half an hour to the scheduled Jump position when the captain finally returned to the bridge. “Captain,” Ferrol nodded, unstrapping from the command chair and standing up. “Still running on schedule; twenty-seven minutes to Jump. I gather from Kennedy’s course plan that we weren’t going to decelerate to zero vee before the Jump.”

  “Correct, Commander,” Roman said. “Space horses routinely Jump while in motion, sometimes with rather high velocities relative to their departure star.”

  A fact which Ferrol had probably had a lot more experience with than the captain. He’d lost several space horses that way before he’d figured out how to sneak up without spooking them. “Yes, sir. I presume you’ll want to at least kill our acceleration first?”

  Roman started to speak; paused. “That’s a good point,” he said thoughtfully. “Any idea whether or not space horses can Jump while accelerating?”

  Ferrol frowned, searching his memory. He remembered at least one out in the Tampies’ yishyar who’d been going damned fast when it Jumped away from his net. But whether it had actually been accelerating when he lost it… “I’m not sure,” he told Roman. “I don’t remember reading anything about it one way or the other. I don’t know why they couldn’t, though.”

  “Neither do I. Let’s try it and see.”

  And if the Tampies would rather we didn’t find out for sure? Ferrol wondered sardonically. But there was no point in asking the question aloud. The official line was that the Tampies were honest and open and eager to share all knowledge with their beloved human brothers; and if there was one thing guaranteed about this voyage it was that the captain would be an expert at tracking along the official line. “Yes, sir,” Ferrol said. “Shall I inform the Tampies?”

  For a moment he thought Roman would take him up on his offer. But—“Thank you, Commander; I’ll do it.” He seated himself in the command chair, made a quick sweep of the displays.

  Across at the scanner station, Marlowe looked up. “As long as you’ve got them anyway, Captain,” he said, “you might want to double-check that all this dust isn’t going to block Pegasus’ view of the target star.”

  “There shouldn’t be that much dust this far off the ecliptic,” Roman frowned, reaching over to call up the appropriate readouts.

  “That’s what I thought, sir,” Marlowe nodded. “But there is. We seem to be heading into it, too—the density’s been slowly increasing.”

  Ferrol peered over Roman’s shoulder as the numbers came up. “It won’t be a problem,” he told the other. “That’s nothing but Pegasus’ own dust sweat.”

  Roman looked up at him. “I didn’t realize dust sweat got that dense.”

  Ferrol shrugged. “We’re working Pegasus pretty hard here, sir, whether it shows the strain or not,” he pointed out. “And there’s an awful lot of surface area out there for it to sweat through.”

  “And of course under acceleration like this the whole mass of it falls straight back on top of us,” Roman nodded understanding. “Interesting. One of the many things about space horse transport no one’s really thought about. I’m sure we’ll be finding more of these tidbits over the next few months.”

  I can’t wait, Ferrol thought. Leaving Roman’s side, he returned to his own station, listening with half an ear as the captain discussed the Jump/acceleration question with the Tampies. No, they didn’t know whether it was possible, either, but the Handler was willing to try it.

  Oh, of course they don’t know, Ferrol thought, a touch of bitterness clouding his vision. It was only the first thing anyone considering space horse warfare would think to investigate; but, no, the Tampies hadn’t done that.

  And of course Roman would accept it all at face value. Roman didn’t think about space horse warfare, either.

  “Commander?”

  Ferrol remembered to smooth out his face before turning around. “Yes, Captain?”

  For just a second Roman seemed to study him, as if he’d somehow divined Ferrol’s train of thought. “I’d like us to get a sample of that dust,” he said. “Please inform the survey section, then stay on the intercom and monitor the operation.”

  Ferrol glanced at the chrono. “You want the sample taken before or after the Jump, sir?”

  Roman pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Good point,” he nodded: “The composition may be different at different times. Let’s take one each before and after the Jump; and the
n have them continue to take two samples per day for the rest of the voyage.” His eyes shifted to the main display. “Given their meteoroid diet, it might be instructive to see just what they consider to be waste products.”

  “Especially if some of it turns out to be gold or platinum or iridium?” Kennedy suggested.

  Roman nodded. “The possibility had occurred to me, yes,” he agreed.

  Ferrol turned his face back to his board, keying the intercom for Amity’s survey section as he allowed his lip to twist with contempt. The eternal and single-minded goal of profit. Ancient Rome, he’d read somewhere, had also been hard at work trading with its enemies…just before those same enemies destroyed it.

  Those who don’t know history, he quoted bitterly to himself, are condemned to repeat it.

  Amity was listed on paper as a research/survey ship, and its overlarge scientific contingent turned out to be better at their jobs than Ferrol had really expected. They had the first sample into the ship, onto the lab table, and through a preliminary analysis ten minutes before the Jump…and Ferrol found quiet satisfaction in the fact that the dust, while loaded with strange and exotic silicates, contained not a single scrap of gold, platinum, or iridium.

  Chapter 5

  ROMAN TOUCHED A BUTTON and watched the preliminary analysis of the dust sweat display itself across his screen. Silicon and iron, mainly, with trace amounts of calcium, magnesium, and aluminum. Nothing particularly useful, singly or together. “Have they got a molecular structure analysis yet?” he asked.

  “Still working on it,” Ferrol said, head cocked toward his intercom. “Got some really complex molecules in there, but nothing of any obvious value.”

  “Well, have them map and store everything they can isolate, anyway,” Roman instructed.

  “Yes, sir,” Ferrol said, and relayed the order.

  Suppressing a grimace, Roman turned his attention back to the main display. He hadn’t been expecting them to find any gold nuggets, of course—after twenty years of contact with Tampies, the dust sweat must have been analyzed dozens of times, by people far more interested in making money from space horses than he was. But it would have been nice. “Lieutenant? Jump status?”

  “One minute to Jump, sir,” she said. “Handler’s signaled ready; all ship systems show green.”

  “Marlowe?”

  “All inboard and outboard sensors on and recording,” Marlowe reported. “If there’s anything that can be seen during a Jump, well get it.”

  Roman nodded. “All right,” he said, automatically bracing himself. “Let’s do it.”

  Several months earlier, Roman had discovered that a space horse Jump was completely unspectacular to watch. Now, he discovered, it was equally unspectacular to experience.

  There was no sensation. None at all. One second they were pulling 0.9 gee through the Tampies’ Kialinninni system, with a dull red sun off their port stern; the next second, they were doing exactly the same thing except with a dazzling white sun directly ahead. “Marlowe?” Roman asked.

  “Nothing, Captain,” the other said, shaking his head. “No glitches or transitions on any of the inboard sensors. Outboard scanners…no transitional data on any of them, either.”

  “What’s the time-quantum on the sensors, the standard half picosecond?” Roman asked.

  “Better than that, sir,” Marlowe told him. “The manual claims 0.05 picosecond; I’d guess it closer to 0.1, myself.”

  A tenth of a picosecond or less. Zero time, by any reasonable definition. “Thank you. Lieutenant Kennedy? We have Alpha located yet?”

  “Working on it, sir,” Kennedy said. Her voice was its usual unawed self, as if Jumping space horses was something she did every week. “Computer’s got the ecliptic plane identified, and it’s calculating from the Tampies’ data where the planet ought to be. It’ll be a few more minutes.”

  Roman nodded, keying his intercom as mention of the Tampies brought a sudden idea to mind. “Captain to Handler. Sso-ngii, are you able to speak?”

  There was a short pause, and then the screen lit up with the Tampy’s image, his twisted face almost lost between the amplifier helmet and the red-white neckerchief. At least the sleeping animal wasn’t in view this way. “I hear, Rro-maa,” Sso-ngii said. “What is your wish?”

  “Does Pegasus know where the planet is we’re heading for? Can it sense it, I mean, from here?”

  The Tampy’s face was unreadable, as usual. “I do not know,” he whined. “I know space horses can see many distant stars and solid objects within telekene range; that is all.”

  “Yeah,” Roman grunted, annoyed despite the fact he’d half expected that answer. One of the more maddening Tampy characteristics was their steadfast and muleheaded refusal to ever speculate aloud unless and until they had absolute proof one way or the other. Pressing Sso-ngii on the subject would do nothing but pull increasingly obscure facts about space horses from him; and while that might be a useful exercise some day, at the moment Roman couldn’t be bothered. “Well, then, just stand by,” he told the Tampy. “We’ll have the location in a few minutes and feed the direction back there. Until then, you might as well have Pegasus stop our acceleration.”

  “Your wishes are ours.”

  Roman frowned at the screen, wondering if the Tampy was being sarcastic. But that was hardly likely. “Very good. Execute.”

  He broke the connection; and an instant later grabbed reflexively at the arms of his chair as the Amity made a stomach-lurching transition to zero-gee.

  Belatedly, the deceleration warning went on, and Roman swore under his breath. Textbook fusion-drive deceleration/cool-down was a five-minute process; once again, old reflexes had betrayed him.

  “Captain?” Ferrol cut into his embarrassment. The other’s voice was bland enough…but as Roman turned to face him he could see that the exec was privately enjoying his discomfiture. “Survey section reports they’ve taken the next dust sweat sample,” Ferrol continued. He cocked an eyebrow. “Assuming, that is, you still want them to bother analyzing the stuff.”

  Roman eyed him. “Have you received any orders to the contrary, Commander?” he asked mildly.

  The skin around Ferrol’s eyes tightened a bit. Perhaps, Roman thought, he’d been hoping for an overreaction. “No, sir,” he said, matching Roman’s tone.

  “Then I’d say you could safely assume I still want the dust analyzed. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Yes, sir,” Ferrol said, the first stirrings of awkwardness starting to appear at the corners of his lips. He was now on the defensive, and didn’t like it a bit. “I just thought the order might be worth checking on, after the negative results of the first sample.”

  For a moment Roman just looked at him, watching the discomfort grow. “This is a research ship, Commander,” he said at last. “Its mission is to collect data; on Tampies, Tampy-human interactions, unexplored planets, space horse travel, and space horses themselves. All data, whether it looks to be immediately useful or not.”

  “Understood, sir,” Ferrol said, his discomfort starting to edge into a simmering of anger.

  “Good,” Roman nodded. He held the eye contact a second longer, then turned back to Marlowe. “Progress on the search for Alpha, Lieutenant?” he asked.

  “Another minute, Captain,” the other said promptly, his voice the cadet-precise monotone of someone trying hard to keep himself inconspicuous. “We’ve got the theoretical position calculated, and we’re searching that immediate area with the scopes.”

  Roman nodded and keyed his own displays to monitor the search. Thus are drawn the battle lines, he thought darkly. Ferrol had no real reason to care whether or not the survey section was wasting its time with Pegasus’ dust sweat, and he and everyone on the bridge knew it. The question had been nothing less than a challenge to Roman’s command authority, or his judgment, or both.

  Or in other words, despite all of his high-sounding statements the previous day, Ferrol wasn’t going to be content with simp
ly letting Amity’s crew make up their own minds about the Tampies on merit alone. He was going to make this into a personal confrontation between himself, the anti-Tampy realist, and Roman, the pro-Tampy military/political hack.

  And if Marlowe’s reaction was anything to go by, Ferrol had at the very least managed to sour the atmosphere on the bridge a bit. A subtle but genuine form of damage.

  “Got it, Captain,” Kennedy announced. “Bearing 96.4, 15.3. Distance, six hundred thousand kilometers.”

  “Send the direction to the Tampies,” Roman told her. “Straight-line path, once we’ve come around, and have Sso-ngii keep acceleration at 0.9 gee.”

  He would have thought Ferrol would be willing to quit while he was ahead. He was wrong. “Shall I compute turnover point for them, sir?” the other spoke up. “Their excuse for a computer may not be able to handle the calculation.”

  “Let’s find out, shall we?” Roman countered. “Lieutenant, just give Sso-ngii the location and let the Tampies do the rest.” He cocked an eyebrow to Ferrol. “If they can, that is.”

  They could, and did…and just under five hours later Pegasus eased the Amity smoothly into geosynchronous orbit around Alpha.

  If Ferrol had won the first round of his private duel, the Tampies had clearly won the second.

  Roman had seen a fair number of planetary landscapes over the years, either in person or in holos, and he’d found that in almost every case his first impression was of the wild and exotic color combinations alien plant life always seemed able to come up with.

  It was a rule that Alpha had proved a glaring exception to. The wide prairielike field the landing party was busy poking around, as well as the forest beyond it, were done entirely in black, white, and shades of gray.

  “It’s really rather amazing,” Ells Sanderson commented, and even through the muffling of his filter mask there was no mistaking the excitement in his voice. “The predominant black-and-gray plant coloration makes considerable sense as far as photosynthesis goes—allows more energy to be collected, including more of the infrared than straight chlorophyll-variants can utilize.”