by Timothy Zahn
“Epilonninni feels no danger,” Ppla-zii said promptly.
“Good. You tell me right away if that changes—you got that?”
“Your wishes are ours.”
“Yeah.” But just in case…Ferrol glanced around the bridge. “Kohlhase, as of right now your only job is to watch for anomalous movement heading toward or across a line directly in front of Epilog,” he instructed one of the crewers. “Randall?”
“The black hole weighs in at about a hundred solar masses,” the other reported. “Only slightly charged, but it’s rotating pretty fast. Figure the event horizon at about 150 kilometers; we’re approximately three million kilometers out from that now.”
Ferrol nodded, trying to remember everything he’d ever read about black holes. “We getting any relativistic effects yet?” he asked. “Frame dragging or other orbital anomalies?”
Randall shrugged. “Not at this distance, no.” He cocked an eyebrow. “ ’Course, we’ll have to go a lot closer in if we want a real look at those beasties of yours.”
“Right,” Ferrol nodded. “And your job will be to make sure we don’t get carried away by the thrill of it all. Pay especially close attention to radiation levels and gravitational gradients; but if you see anything going on outside the ship that bothers you, I want to hear about it. Clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
And all was ready. Ferrol took a deep breath, shifted his gaze to the screen. Over twenty flashing circles marked anomalous motion now, the nearest of them twenty thousand kilometers further in toward the black hole. “Okay, Ppla-zii,” he said. “Real slow and careful, now…take us in.”
Chapter 26
THE ASTEROID WAS LARGE and craggy, its edges sheathed in a pale and ghostly blue light from the distant black hole. A spot of white from the Scapa Flow’s searchlight swept slowly over it, lingering on a handful of shadows before moving on. Staring at the display, Ferrol shook his head. “Okay, I give up,” he said to no one in particular. “Where did the damn thing go?”
“To the left, I think,” Demarco said. “Over there by the—there it goes!”
A black shadow had detached itself from the asteroid and was skittering off through space, reaching the edge of the display before the tracking system caught up and centered it again. Roughly half a meter across, with a tendency to make right-angle turns in mid-course, it had early on been dubbed a butterfly…and in Ferrol’s opinion they’d learned just about all that twenty minutes of passive observation could teach them about it. “Let’s bring it in, Mal,” he said. “Whenever you’ve got a clear shot.”
“Right.” Demarco hissed gently between his teeth. “Here goes…”
The Scapa Flow jerked slightly as the net shot out. Ferrol held his breath…and at the last instant the butterfly swerved into a hairpin curve. Too late; the net swept around it and tightened—
In the pale blue light the brief flicker of coronal discharge from the net was clearly visible. The butterfly gave one last spasmodic twitch and went limp. “Townne: we’ve got it,” Ferrol called into his intercom. “Reel it in.”
“Right.”
On the display the netted butterfly began moving back toward the ship. Ferrol arched his shoulders, stretching muscles stiff with tension, and listened to the growing sense of bitter emptiness rumbling through his stomach. In four hours of drifting through the accretion disk they’d spotted, identified, and filmed no fewer than fifteen different variants of space-going creatures. Four—five, now—had been netted, electrically stunned or killed, and brought aboard for further study.
And in that whole damn menagerie, they hadn’t found a single solitary predator.
“Ffe-rho?”
With an effort, Ferrol shook the self-pity from his mind. “Yes, Wwis-khaa, what is it?”
“Is it your wish that we continue inward toward the black hole?”
Ferrol took a moment to check the external status readouts. He’d kept the ship moving with the general circular flow of the accretion disk since their arrival, moving only a few hundred kilometers further inward during that time. “Unless there’s a problem, yes,” he told Wwis-khaa. “Is the odd gravity bothering Epilog?”
“I do not know,” the Tampy said. “I know that it is a troublesome place for him; that is all.”
And a troubled space horse meant troubled and exhausted Handlers. A flash of anger flared up in the middle of Ferrol’s frustration, but he clamped his teeth against it. There was no point in snapping the Tampies’ heads off over this; for all their vaunted efficiency in hauling ships around, it was becoming painfully clear that space horses simply weren’t up to operating under prolonged stress. “Can you estimate how long it’ll be before we need to leave?” he asked Wwis-khaa. “Taking into account your own fatigue and that of the other Handlers?”
“I do not know,” the other said. “I know only that I will be able to Handle Epilonninni for two more hours, and that Bbri-hwoo will not be able to take my place then; that is all.”
Two hours…and they’d barely even scratched the surface of this system’s potential. “Understood,” he told the Tampy, a sour taste in his mouth. “All right, let’s try this: as soon as Ppla-zii takes over for you, we’ll find a nearby system to Jump to. Perhaps after you’ve all had a few days’ rest we’ll be able to come back.”
“Perhaps. I do not know.”
Ferrol looked up at Demarco. “Well,” he said. “Looks like this is—”
“Ffe-rho?”
Ferrol looked back at the intercom. “Yes, Wwis-khaa, what is it now?”
“Epilonninni is…troubled.” The alien eyes stared unblinking at Ferrol. “Something that troubles him is near.”
Ferrol’s mouth went suddenly dry. “Kohlhase? What have you got?”
“No motion anywhere near Epilog’s bow,” the other said promptly.
“Keep watching,” Ferrol ordered. “Mal, Randall; I want a full scan of—”
“Motion!” Demarco cut in. “Bearing thirty-five degrees starboard, three zenith; range, eleven hundred meters.”
“I’m on it,” Ferrol gritted. His display locked and tracked; with fingers that were suddenly trembling he keyed for computer identification. The fifteen different species they’d listed ran past the image…
“It’s a new one,” Demarco confirmed. “Bigger than the others, too—almost four meters across.”
A sidebar of Ferrol’s display froze an image of the creature, scrubbed it…“Looks a little like a miniature vulture,” he muttered, a shiver running up his back.
Demarco glanced over his shoulder. “Is that good or bad?”
Ferrol chewed at the back of his lower lip. The rest of the scan was still showing negative… “As long as there’s just one of them it should be safe enough.”
Demarco grunted. “Not your predator, then, I take it?”
Carefully, Ferrol forced down the momentary rush of panic. There was no danger here. Really. “Actually, I don’t know,” he told Demarco. Logical, scientific thinking—that was what he needed right now. “We’ve been calling them vultures this whole time because they were busy picking a dead space horse apart when we first spotted them…but on the other hand, they dived right into the fight on the shark’s side when it attacked the Amity. Could be they’re really more like jackals than vultures.”
“Well, if the shark you described is anything to go by, these things sure don’t fit the predator shape,” Demarco pointed out. “For whatever that’s worth.”
“True,” Ferrol nodded. “On the other hand, space horses are cylindrical, too. Maybe the shape has more to do with the ability to Jump than with any specific feeding or behavior pattern.” He watched as the creature drifted along, just a little faster than the rocks around it, shifting direction slightly every few seconds. An odd hunting pattern, if that was what it was. “I wish we could get a good look at its underside,” he commented under his breath. “The vultures we tangled with had really outsized feeding orifices down there.”
“Motion!” Randall snapped. “That rock just ahead of the vulture.”
Ferrol’s display skittered dizzyingly for an instant, locked on a blue-edged shape zigzagging between the rocks. “A butterfly?” he tentatively identified it.
“Looks like one,” Randall confirmed. “In one hell of a hurry, too.”
Ferrol keyed his display for a wide-screen overview, his heart starting to pound in his ears. If their junior vulture was indeed a predator…
But nothing. Even as the butterfly traced out its serrated path, the vulture continued on its slow meandering way, totally oblivious to the potential meal that had fled from practically under its nose.
“Off hand,” Demarco said dryly, “I’d say your junior vulture has a lot to learn about the predator business.”
Ferrol sighed. “Or else just brushed its teeth and doesn’t want to eat yet,” he countered, trying to match the other’s tone. It was a wasted effort.
“So what now?” Demarco asked. “You still want me to net it?”
Ferrol shrugged. “Might as well, I suppose.” The vulture was passing the asteroid the butterfly had fled from; the butterfly itself had long since vanished off the edge of the wide-screen display. Touching a switch, Ferrol keyed back to the vulture close-up again. “Like you said, we’ve got one of everything el—ˮ
And without warning the vulture abruptly shot off the edge of the display.
“Track it!” Ferrol snapped. The wide-screen came back again, giving an even wider view this time—
“God Almighty!” Randall gasped. “Look at that thing go!”
Ferrol nodded, his full attention on the vulture. Zigzagging through the dust and gravel between the larger rocks at a speed Ferrol wouldn’t have guessed it was capable of, it was almost like watching a repeat of the butterfly’s flight.
Almost exactly like watching a repeat of the butterfly’s flight… “Randall—run a comparison between the vulture’s and butterfly’s paths.”
“Already done it, Chayne,” Randall told him. “It’s almost an exact match. The vulture’s definitely tracking the butterfly.”
“Cute,” Demarco growled. “So what the hell is out there for it to track?”
Ferrol smiled tightly. “The butterfly’s dust sweat, of course.”
“The what?”
“Tell you later,” Ferrol said. “I want to watch this.”
The butterfly had appeared on the display again. Still running…but there was no doubt now that the vulture was going to catch it. Even as they watched, the predator came within a handful of meters—
And, abruptly, the zigzagging ceased, both creatures continuing on in tandem with the pursuer’s last velocity. “The vulture’s got it,” Randall murmured. “Locked up solid in a telekene grip.”
Demarco hissed between his teeth. “And reeling it in…there it goes.”
The two creatures came together…and a moment later it was all over.
For a minute the bridge was silent. “All right,” Ferrol said quietly. “Randall, give Wwis-khaa a call—tell him to ease us forward into net range of that vulture.”
“Chayne!” Kohlhase cut in. “Movement ahead and port—something big.”
Ferrol slapped the intercom switch. “Wwis-khaa—emergency,” he snapped. “Find a target star and Jump us out of here.”
“Your wishes are ours.”
“As soon as Epilog’s ready,” Ferrol told hm. “Demarco—computer ID scan; I want a size readout on it. Kohlhase, scan for anything that could be vultures coming off it.”
And at that instant his console pinged. A comm laser had made contact—
“This is Captain Roman aboard the Amity,” a familiar voice boomed out of the speaker. “Come in, Scapa Flow.”
Ferrol stared at the speaker, a rush of deja vu flooding over him. The Tampies’ yishyar system—the captured space horse colt—Roman’s challenge from the Dryden, and the Scapa Flow’s chip-skin escape…
And it was only as the flashback faded and he was able to think again did the crucial question even occur to him.
How in bloody hell had Roman tracked them here?
He cleared his throat. “Tell Wwis-khaa to secure from that emergency Jump,” he told Randall. Keying for vision, he tapped the transmit switch. “This is Ferrol,” he said into the mike. “Bit far from home, aren’t you, Captain?”
“I could say the same about you,” Roman countered as his image appeared on the comm display. He looked tired; but at the same time, there was something grimly self-satisfied about his expression. “What’s your status at the moment, Commander?”
“No problems, except that we have less than two hours before we’ll have to leave,” Ferrol told him. “Our space horse and Handlers are a little strained by the conditions here.”
“I trust no one has been hurt.”
Ferrol swallowed. There had been a very definite threat beneath the words. “Everyone’s in perfect health,” he assured the other. “And before you ask, there’ve been no threats, either. Wwis-khaa and the others came voluntarily.”
“At least from Arachne,” Roman said pointedly. “From what Yamoto said it didn’t sound like you called for volunteers before then. So. Did you find what you came for?”
Ferrol curled a hand into a fist, wondering if Roman had somehow guessed his real motive. “Not really,” he said evenly. “But along the way we’ve learned a fair amount about the space-going ecology of this place, and we’ve collected five samples for further study back at the Cordonale. We have a line on a sixth at the moment; with your permission, we’d like to try and get it.”
“Go ahead.” Roman cocked an eyebrow. “You don’t seem especially surprised to see us.”
“No, we were surprised enough,” Ferrol admitted. “It’s just that the surprise got covered over by relief—when we first spotted you I assumed you were a shark. I don’t suppose you’d like to tell us how you managed to track us down.”
Roman shook his head. “Actually, we’re not absolutely sure ourselves,” he said. “All the Tampies can tell us is that Sleipnir was able to follow you here. Marlowe’s suggested that it’s some kind of perturbations in some theoretical telekene field, but so far—”
“Damn,” Ferrol breathed. Suddenly, so loudly he could almost hear the clicks, it had all fallen together. “It’s the dust sweat, Captain. Sleipnir read our trail from Epilog’s dust sweat.”
Roman frowned. “I don’t see—”
“Hang on,” Ferrol cut him off, fumbling for the recorder keys. The junior vulture’s attack on the butterfly…there. “Take a look at this,” he said, keying for transmission. “We recorded it here, just before you showed up.”
For a few moments the laser carrier hummed with silence as Roman’s image frowned thoughtfully at something off camera. “Interesting,” he said at last. “You’re right, dust sweat clearly seems to be the space-going analog of a terrestrial animal’s blood-scent. But that only works if the animal doesn’t Jump.”
“No,” Ferrol shook his head, feeling the excitement of the revelation tingling through him. Why had no one ever seen this before—? “The dust sweat ends at a Jump, but the trail doesn’t. Those complex silicon molecules in the dust, remember?—the ones everybody’s looked at and never really seen? It’s there. Somehow, the information on Jump direction is locked into those molecules.”
“Oh, my God,” Roman said, a sudden look of horror on his face. “You’re right…but it’s not just the Jump information. It’s a record of everything the animal’s gone through. Short-term, maybe even long-term memory—all of it.”
Ferrol frowned. “I don’t see how that follows.”
“The second shark in the 9862 system,” Roman said quietly. “The one that destroyed the Atlantis’ task force
. It knew everything about their weapons and tactics.”
Ferrol stared at the other, a cold knot tightening in the pit of his stomach. In his mind’s eye he saw that horrible massacre: the second shark using its vulture cloud to block the lasers and ion beams, using its own telekening power to block the missiles and then to put death-grips on the ships themselves…
And the first shark’s twisting, roiling dance of death. “It wasn’t a death dance at all,” he murmured. “The first shark was trying to spread its dust sweat around.”
“I think you’re right,” Roman agreed. “Marlowe?”
“Confirmed, Captain,” Marlowe’s voice came from off-camera. “The second shark passed through that area, all right; and if you look closely, you can see that it pauses there for a couple of seconds before starting its charge.”
Ferrol shivered suddenly. “And we sat in the 66802 system afterward…for ten days.”
“We did indeed,” Roman nodded grimly. “And were sitting ducks the entire time. The only thing I can think of is that the missile we shot off to try and blind the incoming vultures did enough damage to Sleipnir’s dust sweat residue to make it unreadable.”
Ferrol gazed out the port at the eerie blue light edging the nearest asteroids and creating a sort of background haze from the distant ones. “It’s crazy,” he said, shaking his head. “The Tampies have been running space horses for over half a century now. How come they never figured this out?”
“Probably never had any reason to,” Roman said “I doubt they’ve had someone steal a space horse out from under them before.”
The bubble burst, and Ferrol abruptly remembered where he was. And why. “Right,” Ferrol said. “So. What now?”
For a moment Roman gazed off into infinity. “What now,” he said, “is that we get back to the Cordonale with this as quickly as possible. Or perhaps to—”
