navigator, and it seemed that he fancied himself a pilot as well.
“Away we go!” Addesin declared as the shuttle fell away from its cradle out the bottom of the bay. “Have you ever ridden in one of these before?”
Keflyn shook her head. “I usually have more sense.”
The shuttles had no reverse-thrust engines, another weight-saving peculiarity of these machines. Addesin simply rotated the ship over on its back and engaged the main engines enough to brake their speed before rotating back to a nose-first position, letting gravity draw the shuttle down toward the planet. After a while the shields began to burn against the outer edges of the atmosphere, and from that point they were going down in a hurry.
Keflyn had never before ridden a ship down from orbit to landing entirely by gliding unpowered. The main thing that impressed her was how long it took, nearly an hour-and-a-half after leaving the
It did give her time for a good, long look at the Feldenneh colony. It was located well inland in the north of the smaller continental area, at the eastern base of the mid-continental range of mountains. Like Kanis, this was a heavily forested world, the inherent imbalance of the cold continental and polar areas and the warm equatorial seas driving a weather system that distributed a fairly even amount of precipitation year-round over almost the entire land areas. Keflyn had her closest look at the continental glaciers while they were still very far up, several hundred kilometers away.
The colony itself was not that large, it’s single impressive feature being the three-kilometer runway for the shuttles. Some distance away, tucked back under the edges of the forest, was the colony itself, some five dozen simple wooden houses and a few larger buildings. The Feldenneh were not farmers, their diet limited to nuts, bread, and meat, and they certainly had not come to this world to farm.
It occurred to Keflyn then that Jon Addesin was looping the shuttle around to align it with the runway, and that he intended to bring the little ship down in a rolling stop. She realized for the first time that this aging shuttle had not even been designed for field drive vertical landings. She had never made a rolling landing before. For that matter, she had never even been in a ship that had wheels, much less used them.
Fortunately the shuttle had been designed with large wheels and rugged landing gear for high-speed landings on unimproved runways. Addesin rotated the wings forward and dropped the flaps, and the ship shook and rattled as it protested the slower speeds. Moments later it bumped hard against the runway, and Keflyn was certain that the landing gear must have collapsed to leave the shuttle sliding in on its belly, the ship shook and vibrated so violently. She was contemplating abandoning ship when the machine suddenly lurched almost to a complete stop and rolled off the runway onto the cramped parking apron.
“There, that was something of an adventure even for a Starwolf, I’ll bet,” Addesin remarked happily as he began shutting down the little ship.
“Flying a Starwolf fighter is an adventure,” Keflyn remarked as she removed her belts, intent upon finding an open outer door. “That was a very inefficient attempt at self-destruction.”
“Inefficient?” Addesin was too surprised to be annoyed.
“We are still alive.” She stared at him. “I cannot imagine that space flight was ever that primitive.”
The nose of the shuttle split vertically just under the cockpit and opened to either side, and a ramp rolled down. By the time Keflyn reached the cargo deck, a cool, fresh breeze was stirring through the wide hatch. She stepped out onto the ramp, looking across a long, narrow meadow of deep, dense grass surrounded by forests and low mountains. It was a perfect day. The sun was bright but not hot or intense, and a gentle wind stirred through the grass in green waves.
A flatbed land transport, loaded with crates ready for shipment, rolled along the road from the settlement to the base of the ramp, and a pair of male Feldenneh stepped out of its front cabin. Vaguely wolf-like in appearance, with slender, thickly-furred bodies and long, narrow heads, they were both nearly a head taller than Keflyn, no doubt chosen for their tasks as loaders because of their considerable size for their kind. They were about to board the ramp when they saw her standing at the top and stopped short, staring. Nothing betrayed the Starwolves more for what they were than their second set of arms. Keflyn was dressed in a conventional manner for a Kelvessan civilian, in burgundy pants and tunic with a black vest, all of heavy material, but with no cape to hide her lower arms.
The smaller of the two relatively husky Feldenneh seemed to consider the meaning of this unexpected appearance of a Starwolf for a moment, then stepped quickly up the ramp to meet her. It had never occurred to Keflyn to wonder if Jon Addesin would have warned the Feldenneh what he was bringing them. It seemed that he had not.
“I am Derrighan, shipping master,” he introduced himself simply, his voice the soft, rich purr of his kind. “How may the people of Denneshyann serve you, warrior?”
“I am Keflyn of the Methryn,” she answered, a little disconcerted by his intent and slightly bewildered stare. “I have been sent to seek the answers to a very ancient riddle. We believe that this may have once been a major world of the Republic.”
“You will have to ask our Speaker, Kalmedhae, for any answers to your questions that we may have,” Derrighan said guardedly, “but I think that you will not be disappointed.”
Keflyn helped to unload the shuttles, since she could lift so much more than anyone else, before she rode the last transport into the settlement. She thought that she should do these people a favor or two before she came asking for handouts and hospitality… not that the congenial Feldenneh where likely to refuse her. More than anything, she was busy reviewing her strategy, because nothing in the greater universe outside the Methryn’s hull had gone at all the way she had expected.
She had been watching her father’s techniques for years, and that had let her down from the start. Velmeran’s method of operation had always been quite simple; everyone he had ever met had been frightened to death of him. His reputation alone made his enemies afraid to cross him, while he would approach a would-be friend with that spontaneous innocence and understanding of his and win loyal supporters. That system adamantly refused to work for Keflyn. The Feldenneh found her cute and charming, and perhaps even a little lost. Jon Addesin fancied himself in love. The Feldennye shipping master Derrighan was in love, and too polite to let on. But no one was in the least bit frightened except Keflyn herself, who needed a bit more cooperation and a few less alien admirers.
Her meeting with Kalmedhae was to take place that night over dinner in the Speaker’s own house. Kalmedhae was an older Feldenneh who served the colony as Speaker, as far as Keflyn understood a combination of mayor, judge, and social councilor. Aside from Kalmedhae’s own household, the other guests at dinner were Jon Addesin and the shipping master Derrighan. She could imagine why Derrighan had wrangled himself an invitation to dinner; he stayed close to Keflyn’s side to insure his place beside her at the table. Addesin was, at least at first, too annoyed to notice that he had competition. He was forever trying to raise extra money for his ship by selling goods on speculation to the colonists he supplied. Because of a mistake in labeling the shipping crates, something he had bought to sell to the fur-bearing Feldenneh had turned out to be five thousand bottles of suntan lotion.
So there Keflyn sat, trapped at the table between her pair of strange suitors, knowing that there might be trouble as soon as Jon Addesin recovered from his mood of annoyance enough to notice. Keflyn entertained some hope that Addesin might never know. Despite his occasional obvious and very self-conscious attempts at acting the part of the daring young pirate captain, he was too absorbed in nursing his shaky business and ailing ship to be aware of anything that did not present itself as a profitable venture. The possible romance of a Starwolf and a Feldenneh would not interest him beyond its threat to his own plans… unless he could figure out some way to sell tickets.
She told Kalmedhae everything about her mission that she had been willing to tell Addesin, not daring to allow even the Feldenneh to know the greater scope of her search. The Feldenneh gave their wholehearted support
