“I’ll take the search team of course,” Menno said with just the faint hint of a smirk. He knew I didn’t trust him in command of the Searcher. He was letting me know that he knew how I felt.
“Actually, I’ll command the search team. It’s been some time since I made planetfall. Menno, you’ll assume temporary command here. Aguella, you’re with me. Memm to Lackofa and Jicklet to join us. And memm Third Officer Deeved to take sensor station here.”
Menno nodded. I had called his bluff. I’d demonstrated that I was sufficiently confident to leave him in charge. At least as long as I brought Deeved to the perch as well. Deeved was third officer, a Tropical. He was no ally of mine, but he despised Menno. Menno wouldn’t get away with anything while Deeved was around.
I hated the atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust, but I’d adapted. It was why command was now centered in this perch where we could all see each other in real space: Any of our functions could have been carried out from dock, through the ship’s uninet. But in a world where betrayal was a real possibility it was reassuring to be able to stay globes to globes. I needed to see Menno. And I enjoyed seeing Aguella.
I flew down-ship with Aguella close beside me. Lackofa met us halfway to the Explorer.
“You’re leaving Menno in charge, Ellimist? Are you crazy? He’ll turn this ship around and head back to his little Utopia.”
Lackofa steadfastly refused to either treat me with the deference due to an official Wise One, or the obedience due a commander, or for that matter the basic respect due to any fellow Ketran. I valued him all the more.
He had grown cranky over the years. Crankier even than when he’d been a lowly third biologist. He was the ship’s chief scientist.
“I have Deeved watching him. And anyway, the crew is loyal.”
Lackofa said, “Don’t count too much on loyalty, Ellimist. It’s a weak force.”
He was not being merely facetious. He was serious. Did he know something?
I wanted to press him for information, but Lackofa was trusted by every faction. He was trusted precisely because it was known that he would never violate a confidence or become an informer.
And yet he was sending me a clear signal. Most likely he was exaggerating. Most likely.
Too late to turn back now without showing unacceptable weakness. No choice but to go forward and count on a divided, faction-riven crew and what Lackofa called the weak force of loyalty.
The Explorer was a new ship whose design reflected lessons learned in previous encounters with alien craft. Jicklet and her people had been at work on her for five years. The basic materials had been drawn from asteroids and from occasional planetfalls. Jicklet had something of an empire now: a large yet cramped complex of shops, foundries, fuelers, hangers, and repair cradles. Ugly crystal and metal structures formed a clunky, asymmetrical ring around the ship, below the fighter stations and above the engines.
Jicklet handled the engines, the weapons and the small craft. If there was anyone with more power than the commander, it was Head Tech Jicklet. But in her at least, loyalty was not a weak force.
I had toured the Explorer in its various stages of construction and presided at a ceremony of launching. I was familiar with the ship, but it had rested, unused, in its cradle for the last year.
Jicklet was practically vibrating with anticipation.
“Head Tech, I hate to call on you at such short notice. You know, you’re welcome to send one of your subs along if you’re otherwise occupied.”
A joke, of course. No power in the galaxy could have kept her from flying the Explorer’s first mission.
“I think I can make the time,” Jicklet said dryly. “May I ask the mission?”
“That watery moon down there. We want to take a look below the surface without using active sensors.”
“The Explorer will handle it,” she said confidently.
It was a pretty craft, a nice melding of Ketran sensibilities and alien pragmatism. A crate, but largely transparent, with flat-crys panels buttressed by force fields. She was not Z-space capable, designed for O and A: Orbit and Atmosphere. There were swooped wings and massive ion propulsion engines at the back. She was fast, versatile, and heavily armed with our own improved version of the Capasin beam weapon, as well as a number of fire-and-forget explosive homers.
So many weapons. So much killing power.
I put on an approving smile for Jicklet’s benefit, but she’d seen my doubts.
“We’ve come a long way through a dangerous galaxy,” she said.
“A long way,” I agreed. We had lost our world because the Capasins thought we were aggressors when we were not. What was the moral of that story? That we should be prepared for violence at every turn? Right or wrong, that was the lesson we had learned. We would never be unprepared again.
And yet, here we were displaying our readiness for mayhem in every curve of our ship. Were we setting ourselves up for another, even more complete annihilation?
No time for all that. I needed to clear my mind of possible betrayal and possible wrong impressions. Focus on the mission at hand.
“Let’s see what your toy can do, Jicklet.”
We went aboard and docked. We were enclosed but able to see stars in every direction but down. A compromise. Just what Menno had in mind for our race: adaptation. If no planet matched our needs, maybe we should match ourselves to the planet. We had the genetic manipulation techniques to do it in a few generations. We oldsters would live out our lives as pitiful, flightless Ketrans. But our juvies would be born without wings, with sturdier builds, stronger bones, true feet instead of pods, and no docking talons at all.
Was Menno right?
No. Not while I was commander.
The Explorer released its hold on the Searcher and Jicklet lit the engines. The g forces
