Dwer snorted. “Yeah, well you just said a mouthful there, Rety. Aim into a transfer point? Did you ever think how many generations it took our ancestors to learn how to pull that off? A trick we’ve got to figure out in just a midura or two?”
This time, Rety didn’t have to reply. Little yee snaked his long neck from her belt pouch, reaching out to nip Dwer’s arm.
“Hey!” he shouted, drawing back.
“see?” the little urs chided in a lisping voice, “no good come from snip-snapping each other, use midura to study! or just complain till you die.”
Dwer rubbed a three-sided weal, glaring at the miniature male. But yee’s teeth had left the skin unbroken. Any Jijoan human knew enough about urrish bites to recognize when one was just a warning.
“All right then,” he muttered to Rety. “You’re the apprentice star god. Talk that smug computer of yours into saving us.”
Rety sighed. In the wilderness back home, Dwer had always been the one with clever solutions to every problem, never at a loss. She liked him better that way, not cowed by the mere fact that he was trapped in a metal coffin, hurtling toward crushing death and ruin. I hope this don’t mean I’m gonna have to nursemaid him all the way across space to some civilized world. When we’re all set up — with nice apart’mints and slave machines doin’ anything we want — he sure is gonna owe me!
Rety squatted before the little black box Gillian Baskin had given her aboard the Streaker — a teaching unit programmed for very young human children. It functioned well at its intended purpose — explaining the basics of modern society to a wild girl from the hicks of Jijo. To her surprise, she had even started picking up the basics of reading and writing. But when it came to instructing them how to pilot a starship … well, that was another matter.
“Tutor,” she said.
A tiny cubic hologram appeared just above the box, showing a pudgy male face — with a pencil mustache and a cheery smile.
“Well, hello again! Have we been keeping our spirits up? Tried any of those games I taught you? Remember, it’s important to stay busy-busy and think positive until help arrives!”
Rety lashed with her left foot, but it passed through the face without touching anything solid.
“Look, you. I told ya there’s nobody gonna come help us, even if you did get out a distress call, which I doubt, since the dolphins only fixed the parts they needed to, to make this tub fly.”
The hologram pursed simulated lips, disapproving of Rety’s attitude.
“Well, that’s no excuse for pessimism! Remember, whenever we’re in a rough spot, it is much better to seek ways of turning adversity into opportunity! So why don’t we—”
“Why don’t we go back to talking about how we’ll control this here piece of dross,” Rety interrupted. “I already asked you for lessons how to steer it through the t-point just ahead. Let’s get on with it!”
The tutor frowned.
“As I tried to explain before, Rety, this vessel is in no condition to attempt an interspatial transfer at this time. Navigation systems are minimal and incapable of probing the nexus ahead for information about thread status. The drive is balky and seems only capable of operating at full thrust, or not at all. It may simply give up the next time we turn it on. The supervisory computer has degraded to mentation level six. That is below what’s normally needed to calculate hyperspatial tube trajectories. For all of these reasons, attempting to cross the transfer point is simply out of the question.”
“But there’s no place else to go! The Jophur battleship was dragging us there when it flung us loose. You already said we don’t have the engine juice to break away before falling in. So we got nothin’ to lose by trying!”
The tutor shook its simulated head.
“Standard wisdom dictates that any maneuver we tried now would only make it harder for friends/relatives/parents to find you—”
This time, Rety flared.
“How many times do I gotta tell you, no one’s coming for us! Nobody knows we’re here. Nobody would care, if they knew. And nobody could reach us if they cared!”
The teaching unit looked perplexed. Its ersatz gaze turned toward Dwer, who looked more adult with his week-old stubble. Of course, that irritated Rety even more.
“Is this true, sir? There is no help within reach?”
Dwer nodded. Though he too had spent time aboard Streaker, he never found it easy speaking to a ghost.
“Well then,” the tutor replied. “I suppose there is just one thing to do.”
Rety sighed relief. At last the jeekee thing was going to start getting practical.
“I must withdraw and get back to work talking to the ship’s computer, no matter what state it is in. I am not designed or programmed for this kind of work, but it is of utmost importance to try harder.”
“Right!” Rety murmured.
“Indeed. Somehow we must find a way to boost power to communications systems, and get out a stronger message for help!”
Rety bolted to her feet.
“What? Didn’t you hear me, you pile o’ glaver dreck? I just said—”
“Don’t worry while I am out of touch. Try to be brave. I’ll be back just as soon as I can!”
With that, the little cube vanished, leaving Rety shaking, frustrated, and angry.
It didn’t help that old Dwer broke up, laughing. He guffawed, hissing and snorting a bit like an urs. Since nothing funny had happened, she figured he must be doing it out of spite. Or else this might be another example of that thing called irony people sometimes talked about when they wanted an excuse for acting stupid.
I’ll slap some irony across your jeekee head, Dwer, if you don’t shut up.
But he was bigger and stronger … and he had saved her life at least three times in the past few months. So Rety just clenched her fists instead, waiting till he finally stopped chuckling and wiped tears from his eyes.
The tutor remained silent for a long time, leaving both human castaways with no way to deal with the ship on their own.
There were makeshift controls, left in place by Streaker’s dolphin crew when they had resurrected this ancient Buyur hulk from a pile of discarded spacecraft on Jijo’s sea bottom. Mysterious boxes had been spliced by cable to the hulk’s control circuits, programmed to send it erupting skyward along with a swarm of other revived decoys, confusing Jophur instruments and masking Streaker’s breakout attempt. But since the dolphins had never expected stowaways, there were only minimal buttons and dials. Without the tutor, there’d be no chance of making the ship budge from its current unguided plummet.
Lacking anything better to do, Rety and Dwer went forward and stared ahead through the bow windows, pitted from immersion in the Great Midden for half a million years. Together, they tried to spot the mysterious “spinning hole in space” that Jijo’s fallen races still recalled in sagas about ancestral days — the mighty doorway each sneakship passed through when it brought a new wave of refugee-settlers to a forbidden world in a fallow galaxy.
At first, Rety saw nothing special in the glittering starscape. Then Dwer pointed.
“Over there. See? The Frog is all bent out of shape.”
Rety had grown up amid a primitive tribe, hiding in a grubby wilderness without even the rough comforts of Dwer’s homeland, the Slope. Living in crude huts, with just campfires to ward off chill and darkness, she had constellations overhead nearly every night of her life. But while her cousins made up elaborate hunters’ tales about those twinkling patterns, her only interest lay in their practical use as signposts, pointing the westward path she might someday use to escape her wretched clan.
Dwer, on the other hand, was chief scout of the Commons of Jijo, trained to know every quirk of the sky — from which the Six Races always expected doom and judgment to arrive. He would notice if something was out of place.
“I don’t see …” She peered toward the cluster of glimmering pinpoints he indicated. “Oh! Some of the stars … they’re clumped in a circle and—”
