The dog never lifted its head from his knee.
He pulled the plastic back and sniffed the patty. It smelled vaguely unpleasant, like dried meat saturated with chemical preservatives.
"You eat this stuff?" He offered it to the dog.
Fellah slid his chin off Gambiel's leg and backed away. His eyes were still half closed and his head down between his shoulders. Gambiel knew very little about dogs, because they didn't fare well in Jinx's high gravity. But he decided the animal's reaction was purely negative, a cross between "guilt" and "disgust."
Gambiel shrugged and broke off a piece of the meat for himself. He put it in his mouth, let his saliva soak it for a moment, and began chewing. It had no flavor, like chewing on wood pulp. He rewrapped the patty, putting it and the others in his pocket.
"What the hell are you doing?" Krater asked as she brushed aside a branch and climbed the last few meters down to his level.
"Trying one of these meat pies." He took them out and showed her.
"You opened the box!"
"Well, we can't keep carrying it. The stasis-field makes us sitting ducks for the kzinti."
"But you should have—"
"Asked your permission? Well, would you have agreed?"
"Of course not."
"So why would I ask?" He shrugged.
"You should have thought it through, Daff. That's an artifact from an ancient xeno-civilization, older than life on Earth. You have no way of understanding what's inside there."
"Sure I do. A little dog, a flute-thing that doesn't work, and some rations that don't have much taste. I tried them on the dog, but it doesn't—"
“You tried them on the dog!”
"And ate some myself. But why does that upset you so?"
Krater ignored his question. She turned to Fellah and was peering at the little animal, which had crawled backwards in among the leaves. Only its eyes and nose, three shiny black marbles among the fluffy white fur, peered out at her.
"It does look like a dog," she said. "How big is it?"
"About five kilos."
"Does it have four legs, a tail, all that?"
"Yeah. I've seen holos of dogs before."
"And friendly?"
"Real friendly. I call him Fellah."
Krater reached out a hand to it. "Come here, Fellah!"
The animal's eyes grew wider and it backed farther into the foliage.
"Not that friendly," Krater said.
"Well, he came to me."
"Then you take care of him, because we have get moving. Our course is more—" She looked around their bubble of clearing, swung her arm off to the right. "—that way."
Gambiel stood and stuck the flute into his belt, taking care not to bend the keys. "Hey, Fellah!"
The dog came out of its leaf hole and jumped into his arms.
"He does seem to like you," Krater admitted.
Gambiel reached down for the dull-gray box, forced it shut—but with the field off—and juggled it under his left arm. "Going to be awkward," he said, hitching the dog around into the crook of his right arm. "Would you . . . ?"
Krater shook her head. "I'm having enough trouble moving myself through these vines. Put the dog and the other stuff back in the box, why don't you?"
"He'll suffocate."
"Then turn the field back on."
"And let the kzinti use it to track us?"
"Then we have to leave the box," she said.
"The Navy will pay a high ransom for an operating stasis mechanism. Could be worth your pension and mine together."
"Then leave the dog."
"No, he'll die up here. Starve to death, fall through to the forest floor, or get eaten by the kzinti. Besides, he could be valuable."
"Well, you're the one who opened the box in the first place."
"We can leave the box," Gambiel decided, setting it down on the vine mat. "Do you think you could find this place again?"
"No."
"If I left it with the stasis-field turned on, we could locate it again, easily."
"So could the kzinti."
"Yeah. And that might distract them."
"Then leave it," she agreed.
"Is that the right decision, hey, Fellah?" he asked, hugging the little dog tighter under his arm.
It looked up at him with those big eyes, seeming to understand the question. It made a sound halfway between a chirp and a whine.
"Err-yupp!"
"Oh, brother!" Krater sighed.
He bent down and activated the flat disk. The cloudy surface of the box cleared to a hard, silvery shine in the fading light.
"Let's get out of here," Krater said.
It was too dark, really, to go swinging thought the trees. But with the box set like a beacon behind them, Gambiel could see no alternative. He readied the grapple in its launcher and aimed left-handed.
Chuff!
* * *
"I need better field accuracy than this," Nyawk-Captain said, handing his jury-built locator to Weaponsmaster.
The kzin took it and inspected the pirated missile circuitry. "Perhaps I can tune—"
"Is the ship's radar back in commission yet?"
"Navigator and I were just making the final adjustments."
"Give me a sweep of the area."
"Yes, sir."
While they fired up the repaired systems, Nyawk-Captain stretched, scratched, and got himself something to eat. He had learned it was easier to shed the armor outside the ship and work the airlock unencumbered. Bad policy if a ground force attacked while all of them were inside, but he didn't think anything would come against the ship, except more Whitefoods. And Nyawk-Captain had made reconstruction of the short-range armaments a priority.
Munching a haunch of Mystery Meat—a Fleet ration consisting of amalgamated proteins and vitamins, pressed around a synthetic bone and inadequately rehydrated—he looked out through the open hatch. The armor stood sentinel there, and in more than just a symbolic sense. Before stepping out of it, he had keyed the enhancers for sound and scent, slaving them by radio circuit back into the ship's sensors.
"Ready now, sir." Navigator called.
"Locate the Thrintun box."
"Two kilometers distant but at a new bearing—uhn, different from the one you took."
"Which way?"
"North and east of here."
"Weaponsmaster, get armor. We will go together to find it this
