Mother Lode

Still Erin considered means of killing the aliens, or, at least, means of destroying their flesh and blood bodies, and it gave her pause to realize that she was thinking murderous thought about them without being punished. Her service hand weapon was in its holster on her flexsuit. It was capable, given time, of burning a hole in Mother's stout, double hulls. If the mining laser had not been left on Haven and if she could have jury-rigged some way to turn it on Mother, then some serious holing would have resulted. But if a frog had a glass ass, it wouldn't jump but once. Civilized man didn't think about ways to accomplish his own death along with the destruction of his spaceship. He considered ways of bringing about the death of others, if it become necessary. He went armed. Rimfire, in addition to having the best long-range detection equipment in the U.P. sector, was also the most powerfully armed spaceship ever built. With the weapons aboard her, she could make rubble of a world and—although it had never been tried—in the unlikely event that it was ever vital to the continued well-being of mankind, she could make a sun pretty sick. Man was a deadly species, and that made him pretty cocky, so confident in his own ability to meet any challenge that he didn't plan for defeat. Thus there was no self-destruct button aboard the Mother Lode, nor aboard any ship of the fleet, for that matter. There were no explosives on a Mule turned miner, no heavy weapons that could be turned against herself. Perhaps that was why Erin was able to imagine—because it was basically impossible—destroying Mother. She had never actually come face-to-face with death. The statistical risks she had faced during her just over thirty years of life had been small. As she'd once told Dent, everyone knows that he's going to die—someday. But since U.P. man had earned—by good nutrition, medical advances, and the elimination of most of the diseases, malfunctions, and to a large extent even the accidents that had once plagued the race—the lifespan mentioned in the Old Bible in Genesis 6:3, she had lived only one quarter of her allotted span and to her the concept of death was still an abstract idea. Not even in her current situation could she believe that she was going to die. So she indulged in idle speculations about how to overcome them, and felt guilt—for it was possible to concede that others might die—at doing nothing while men and women she knew were coming ever closer to being within reach of two things who had absolutely no regard for human life. She was letting the precious minutes spend themselves and she was doing nothing but lying on the bed with Dent's arm around her wishing that there was something she could do. She wept. Mop, with that canine instinct that knows when a beloved human is in stress, came to snuggle up to her side and licked her elbow just once, politely, as if to say, «Hey, Erin, I'm here and I'm sorry you're unhappy.» She slept. When she awoke to the alien's summons she knew it was too late to help her former shipmates in Rimfire. No longer capable of independent thought or action she went to the bridge and activated the communicator. Mop, having seen the slack look come over Erin's face, followed her out of the cabin and darted under the console and curled up into a hairy ball to wait for Erin to be Erin again. «Rimfire, Rimfire, this is the Mother Lode. « The answer was immediate, telling Erin—and The She who dominated her—that Rimfire had been keeping a constant communications watch. «Rimfire, I am Erin Kenner. I want to speak with Captain Julie Roberts.» «Wait one, Mother Lode. « Erin's trapped mind was writhing, struggling, but it was to no avail. «Hello, Erin,» Julie Roberts' voice said. «We have you on visual. What is your situation in regard to the converted destroyer?» Erin's voice was without inflection as she answered. «We claim salvage. The destroyer has been converted to private use. We found her abandoned and derelict.» «Her registration?» Julie Roberts was looking at the mobile graphs of a voice analyzer. Erin's words were being compared to her voiceprint from Rimfire's files. «There is ninety-eight percent correlation,» a technician said while Julie waited for Erin to answer. «She sounds almost as if she were under the influence of a drug,» Ursy Wade said. «The ship is registered to the Haven Refining Company, of the planet Haven,» Erin said. «Her name?» Julie asked. «Murdoch's Plough, « Erin said. «That's the ship that followed the Mother Lode when she lifted off from Haven,» Ursy said. Julie nodded grimly. Her eyes squinted in thought before she pressed the send button and spoke again. «Erin, it's nice to hear your voice. We got your stat that mentioned Ursy Wade's as yet to be met friend. Explain, please.» There was a long pause. Aboard the Mother Lode it took the alien thirty seconds to dig out of Erin's mind that the «yet to be met friend» was an entity named Frank. Then Erin said, «I'm afraid Ursy will be very disappointed. We discovered some fossil bones, that's all. They're humanoid and very interesting.» «Cap'n,» Ursy said, «If that's Erin Kenner speaking, there's something wrong with her.» «There is a certain oddness in her voice,» Julie agreed. «I think it's time we got down to business.» She pushed the send button. «Erin, our life sensors show four entities on your ship.» With sudden anger, The She caused Erin to turn off the communicator. To Erin's surprise, she was addressed directly, not in words but in thoughts. «They can detect our presence?» the alien asked. For the first time since she'd seen Denton explode into a red mist Erin knew hope. Could she, after all, hide at least some of her thoughts from her captor? «Yes,» she said. She started to add that Rimfire could also determine the body weight of any living thing and that, therefore, those aboard the X&A ship were well aware that the two extra entities aboard Mother were considerably larger than life, but she buried the thought and the alien did not detect it. «Tell them,» the alien ordered, «that you took on two extra spacehands on Haven.» «Yes,» Erin said, trying to hide her elation, for now she knew that the alien could not see everything that she was thinking. She relayed the lie to Rimfire. «Okay, Erin, fine,» Julie Roberts said. «Look, it's been a long time since we've had the pleasure of your company. I'm going to come over in the gig and bring a couple of your old friends.» «Like a dozen fully armed space marines?» Ursy asked. «No,» the alien had Erin say. Then, quickly, «Denton and I will come aboard Rimfire. « «Not bloody likely,» Ursy muttered, earning a raised eyebrow from Julie as the captain pushed the transmit button. «It will be good to see you,» Julie said. «We'll use the gig from the Plough,» Erin said. «We'll take you at lockport forward two,» Julie said. «Rimfire out.» «Captain,» Ursy protested, «is it a good idea to give them access to the ship?» «What do we know, Ursy?» Julie asked. «We know that there are two extra life-forms on that Mule, one of which weighs about twice as much as a very healthy professional athlete. I don't think they can sneak into the air lock with Erin and this Denton Gale without our notice, do you?» «No, ma'am,» Ursy said. «It's just—» «It's just that maybe, we're face-to-face with a living alien,» Julie said. «I don't think we should act like people in a low budget space opera and assume that all aliens are bad guys.» «They're not being very straightforward with us,» Ursy said. «How do you judge when an alien intelligence is being friendly?» Julie asked. «Unless you give them a chance to show their intentions.» «According to Erin, or whoever that is over there on the Mule, that converted destroyer was deserted. That means something happened to four or more people.» «Take it easy, Lieutenant,» Julie said. «I guess I'm just a bit nervous,» Ursy said. Julie laughed. «And you're the one who dreams about F.R.A.N.K.» «Used to,» Ursy said. «I've decided that I'd settle for a less than perfect ordinary human man.» «Captain,» said the rating who was monitoring the ship's detection systems, «there's a small boat leaving the destroyer's air lock.» «She's in a hurry,» Julie said, touching her fingertips to her cheek. «Ursy, tell the medical officer to stand by. We'll sanitize our visitors while they're in the lock.» «I'd like to order interior scans and ultrashock,» Ursy said. Julie hesitated. It wasn't really hospitable to submit guests to having their innards examined and to bombard them with unpleasant vibrations that sought out and killed any bacteria or virus that was not normal to the human body. Before the ultrashock technique was perfected, the treatment killed all of the necessary bacteria in the stomach, causing some inconvenience and discomfort for a while, but now those benign microorganisms were spared. The process was just unpleasant for a couple of minutes. «Permission granted,» Julie said. «Yeah, I know,» Ursy grinned. «You're thinking that I'm being too uptight, that a four hundred pound F.R.A.N.K. couldn't hitchhike into the ship with Erin and Gale.» «I'm thinking, Lieutenant, that your suggestion was a very good one,» Julie said. «Carry on.» Although Mop had made it a practice to stay out of reach when his humans were being odd, when he saw them leave Mother and go aboard the larger ship he had to follow. Then Erin and Dent were getting into a small vessel and it was obvious that they were going to go. Going was one of Mop's greatest joys. He jumped up and scratched the side of the gig, barking. He was ignored. The hatch started to close. He sat down, lifted his bearded muzzle, and howled his sadness at being left behind. The She started to quiet the dog with a surge of force, but then she felt Erin's thoughts forming. What Erin was feeling was anger, rage mixed with the fear that she would hurt Mop badly. She lowered herself once again to make direct communication with the subject entity. «Julie Roberts would know that I wouldn't leave Mop here all alone,» Erin said. Anger. Anger had helped her make contact with Mop while she was being «stored» in Mop's little skull. Anger apparently hazed over some of her thoughts, hid them from the alien. Julie Roberts had no way of knowing that Erin even had a dog. Mop leapt up excitedly as Erin opened the hatch. She lifted him into the gig. He raced around in great joy, managed to give Denton a big kiss right on the mouth. Denton didn't even lift his hand to wipe it off. Lieutenant Ursulina Wade was in the ship's sick bay with the chief medical officer, a graying sub-captain who had a lot of questions about just what the hell was going on. «You know, Lieutenant,» the doctor said, «that being shocked free of germs is damned uncomfortable. We do it to every poor son-of-a-bitch who goes into space for the first time. Are you sure this is necessary?» «Captain's orders, sir,» Ursy said. A low signal tone came from the ship's com-system. The doctor said, «What's that?» While it was true that a medical sub-captain outranked a field lieutenant on paper, officers like Ursy Wade looked upon non-operational ranks with condescending tolerance.