shoulders like a cape and moving slowly so as not to jar his head more than necessary, Keff got to the food synthesizer.
«Hangover cure number five, and a high-carb warm-up,» he ordered. The synthesizer whirred obediently. He drank what appeared in the hatch and shuddered as it oozed down to his stomach. He burped. «I needed that. And I need some food, too. Warm, high protein.
«While I replenish myself, tell all, fair lady,» Keff said. «I can take it.» With far more confidence than he felt, he smiled at her central pillar and waited.
«Now, let's see, where were we?» she began in a tone that was firm enough, but his long association with Carialle told him that she was considerably agitated. «You got hit by scarlet lightning. Not, I think, a natural phenomenon, since none of the necessary meteorological conditions existed. There's also the problem with its accuracy, landing right at your feet and knocking you, and you only, unconscious. I refuse to entertain coincidence. Someone shot that lighting right at you! I persuaded Brannel to bring you inside.»
«You did?» Keff was admiring, knowing how little of the language she would have had to do any persuading.
«After he scooted, and not without persuasion, I add for accuracy's sake, we had a plague of what I would normally class as reconnaissance drones, except they have no perceptible internal mechanisms whatsoever, not even flight or anti-grav gear.» Carialle's screens shifted to views of the outside, telephoto and close-angle. Small, colored spheres hovered at some distance, flat apertures all facing the brainship.
«Someone has very pretty eyes,» Keff said with interest. «No visible means of support, as you say. Curious.» The buzzer sounded on the food hatch, and he retrieved the large, steaming bowl. «Ahhh!»
On the screen, a waveguide graph showing frequency modulation had been added beside the image of each drone. The various sound levels rose and fell in patterns.
«Here's what I picked up on the supersonics.»
«Such low frequencies,» Keff said, reading the graphs. «They can't be transmitting very sophisticated data.»
«They're broadcasting voice signals to one another,» Carialle said. «I ran the tapes through IT, and here's what I got.» She played the datafile at slightly higher than normal speed to get through it all. Keff's eyebrows went up at the full sentence in clear Standard. He went to the console where Carialle had allowed him to install IT's mainframe and fiddled with the controls.
«Hmm! More vocabulary, verbs, and I dare to suggest we've got a few colloquialisms or ejaculations, though I've no referents to translate them fully. This is a pretty how-de-do, isn't it? Whoever's running these artifacts is undoubtedly responsible for the unexpected power emissions the freighter captain reported to Simeon.» He straightened up and cocked his head wryly at Carialle's pillar. «Well, my lady, I don't fancy sneak attacks with high-powered weapons. I'd rather not sit and analyze language in the middle of a war zone. Since we're not armed for this party, why don't we take off, and file a partial report on Ozran to be completed by somebody with better shields?»
Carialle made an exasperated noise. «I would take off in a Jovian second, but we are being held in place by a tractor beam of some kind. I can read neither the source nor the direction the power is coming from. It's completely impossible, but I can't move a centimeter. I've been burning fuel trying to take off over and over—and you know we don't have reserves to spare.»
Keff finished his meal and put the crockery into the synthesizers hatch. With food in his belly, he felt himself again. His head had ceased to revolve, and the cold had receded from his bones and muscles.
«That's why I'm your brawn,» he said, lightly. «I go and find out these things.»
«Sacrificing yourself again, Keff? To pairs of roving eyes?» Carialle tried to sound flip, but Keff wasn't fooled. He smiled winningly at her central pillar. All his protective instincts were awake and functioning.
«You are my lady,» he said, with a gallant gesture. «I seek the object of my quest to lay at your feet. In this case, information. Perhaps an Ozran's metabolism only gets a minor shock when touched with this mystical power beam. We don't know that the folk on the other end are hostile.»
«Anything that ties my tail down is hostile.»
«You shall not be held in durance vile while I, your champion, live.» Keff picked up the portable IT unit, checked it for damage, and slung it around his chest. «At least I can find Brannel and ask him what hit me.»
«Don't be hasty,» Carialle urged. On the main screen she displayed her recording of the attack on Keff. «The equation has changed. We've gone suddenly from dealing with indigenous peasantry at no level of technology to an unknown life-form with a higher technology than we have. This is what you're up against.»
Keff sat back down and concentrated on the screen, running the frames back and forth one at a time, then at speed.
«Good! Now I know what I need to ask about,» he said, pointing. «Do you see that? Brannel knew what the lightning was, he knew it was coming, and he got out of its way. Look at those reflexes! Hmmm. The bolt came from the mountains to the south. Southwest. I wonder what the terms are for compass directions in Ozran? I can draw him a compass rose in the dust, with planetary sunrise for east . . .»
Carialle interrupted him by filling the main cabin with a siren wail.
«Keff, you're not listening. It might be too dangerous. To unknown powers who can tie up a full-size spaceship, one human male isn't a threat. And they've downed you once already.»
«It's not that easy to kill Von Scoyk-Larsens,» Keff said, smiling. «They may be surprised I'm still moving around. Or as I said, perhaps they didn't think the red bolt would affect me the way it did. In any case, can you think of a way to get us out of here unless I do?»
Carialle sighed. «Okay, okay, gird your manly loins and join the fray, Sir Galahad! But if you fall down and break both your legs don't come running to me.»
«Nay, my lady,» Keff said with a grin and a salute to her titanium pillar. «With my shield or upon it. Back soon.»
Chapter Five
Keff walked into the airlock. He twitched down his tunic, checked his equipment, and concentrated on loosening his muscles one at a time until he stood poised and ready on the balls of his feet. With one final deep breath for confidence, he nodded to Carialle's camera and stepped forward.
Regretting more every second that she had been talked into his proposed course of action, Carialle slid open her airlock and dropped the ramp slowly to the ground. As she suspected, the flying eyes drifted closer to see what was going on. She fretted, wondering if they were capable of shooting at Keff. He had no shields, but he was right: if he didn't find the solution, they'd never be able to leave this place.
Keff walked out to the top of the ramp and held out both hands, palms up, to the levitating spheres. «I come in peace,» he said.
The spheres surged forward in one great mass, then flit!, they disappeared in the direction of the distant mountains.
«That's rung the bell,» Keff said, with satisfaction. «Spies of the evil wizard, my lady, cannot stand where good walks.»
A whining alarm sounded. Carialle read her monitors.
«Do you feel it? The mean humidity of the immediate atmosphere has dropped. Those arching lines of stray power I felt crisscrossing overhead are strengthening directly above us. Power surge building, building . . .»
«I feel it,» Keff said, licking dry lips. «My nape hair is standing up. Look!» he shouted, his voice ringing. «Here come our visitors!»
Nothing existed beyond three hundred meters away, but from that distance at point south-southwest, two objects came hurtling out of nonexistence one after the other, gaining dimensionality as they neared Carialle, until she could see them clearly. It took Keff a few long milliseconds more, but he gasped when his eyes caught sight of the new arrivals.
«Not the drones again,» Keff said. «Its our wizard!»
