'It'sss not possible!' Makanee sighed. 'His ssspeech centers…'
Creideiki frowned in effort.
* Out :
Creideiki!
* Swim :
Creideiki!
It was Trinary baby talk, but with a queer tone to it. And the dark eyes burned with intelligence. Gillian's telempathic sense throbbed.
'Out!:' He whirled about in the tank and slammed his powerful flukes against the window with a loud boom. He repeated the Anglic word. The falling tone-slope was like a phrase in Primal.
'Out-t-t!: '
'Help him out-t!' Makanee commanded her assistants. 'Gently! Quickly!'
Takkata-Jim was heading back from his comm screen at high speed, wrath on his face. But he stopped abruptly at the gravity tank, and stared at the bright eye of the captain.
It was the last straw.
He rolled back and forth, as if unable to decide on appropriate body language. Takkata-Jim turned to Gillian.
'What I've done was in, what I believed to be the best interest of the ship, crew, and mission. I could make a very good case on Earth.'
Gillian shrugged. 'Let's hope you get the chance.'
Takkata-Jim laughed dryly. 'Very well, we'll hold this charade ship'sss council. I'll call it for one hour from now. But let me warn you, don't push too far, Dr. Baskin. I have powers ssstill. We must find a compromise. Try to pillory me and you will divide the ship.
'And then I will fight-t-t you' he added, low.
Gillian nodded. She had achieved what she had to. Even if Takkata-Jim had done the worst things Makanee suspected of him, there was no proof, and it was a matter of compromise or lose the ship to civil war. The first officer had to be offered an out. 'I'll remember, Takkata-Jim. In one hour, then. I'll be there.'
Takkata-Jim swirled about to leave, followed by his two loyal security guards.
Gillian saw Ignacio Metz staring after the dolphin lieutenant. 'You lost control, didn't you?' she asked dryly as she swam past him.
The geneticist's head jerked. 'What, Gillian? What do you mean?' But his face betrayed him. Like many others, Metz tended to overestimate her psychic powers. Now he must be wondering if she had read his mind.
'Never mind,' Gillian's smile was narrow. 'Let's go and witness this miracle.'
She swam to where Makanee waited anxiously for the emerging Creideiki. Metz looked after her uncertainly, before following.
51 ::: Thomas Orley
With trembling hands, he pulled vines away from the cave entrance. He crept out of his shelter and blinked at the hazy morning.
A thick layer of low clouds had gathered. There were no alien ships, yet, and that was just as well. He had feared they would arrive while he was helpless, struggling against the effects of the psi-bomb.
It hadn't been fun. In the first few minutes the psychic blasts had beaten away at his hypnotic defenses, cresting over them and drenching his brain in alien howling. For two hours — it had felt like eternity — he had wrestled with crazy images, pulsing, nerve-evoked lights and sounds. Tom still shook with reaction.
I sure hope there are still Thennanin out there, and that they fall for it. It had better have been worth it.
According to Gillian, the Niss machine had been confident it had found the right codes in the Library taken from the Thennanin wreck. If there were still Thennanin in the system, they should try to answer. The bomb must have been detectable for millions of miles in all directions.
He dragged a handful of muck out of the gap in the weeds and flung it aside. Scummy sea water welled up almost to the surface of the hole. Another gap probably lay only a few meters beyond the next hummock
— the weedscape flexed and breathed incessantly — but Tom wanted a water entrance near at hand.
He scooped away the slime as best he could, then wiped his hands and settled down to scan the sky from his shelter. On his lap he arranged his remaining psi- bombs.
Fortunately, these wouldn't pack the wallop of the Thennanin distress call. They were simply pre-recorded message casts, designed to carry a brief code a few thousand kilometers.
He had only recovered three of the message globes from the glider wreck, so he could only broadcast a narrow range of facts. Depending on which bomb he set off; Gillian and Creideiki would know what kind of aliens had come to investigate the distress call.
Of course, something might happen that didn't fit into any of the scenarios they had discussed. Then he would have to decide whether to broadcast an ambiguous message or do nothing and wait.
Maybe it would have been better to bring a radio, he thought. But a warship in the vicinity could pinpoint a radio transmission almost instantly, and blast his position before he spoke a few words. A message bomb could do its work in a second or so, and would be much harder to locate.
Tom thought about Streaker. It seemed like forever since he had last been there. Everything desirable was there — food, sleep, hot showers, his woman.
He smiled at the way the priorities had come out in his thoughts. Ah, well, Jill would understand.
Streaker might have to abandon him, if his experiment led to a brief chance to blast away from Kithrup. It would not be a dishonorable way to die.
He wasn't afraid of dying, only of having not done all he could, and not properly spitting in the eye of death when it came for him. That final gesture was important.
Another image came to him, far more unpleasant — Streaker already captured, the space battle already over, all of his efforts useless.
Tom shuddered. It was better to imagine a sacrifice being for something.
A stiff breeze kept the clouds moving. They merged and separated in thick, wet drifts. Tom shaded his eyes against the glare to the east. About a radian south of the haze shrouded morning sun, he thought he saw motion in the sky. He huddled deeper into his makeshift cave.
Out of one of the eastern cloud-drifts, a dark object slowly descended. Swirling vapor momentarily obscured its shape and size as it hung high above the sea of weeds.
A faint drumming sound reached Tom. He squinted from his hiding place, wishing for his lost binoculars. Then the mists parted briefly, and he saw the hovering spaceship clearly. It looked like some monstrous dragonfly, sharply tapered and wickedly dangerous.
Few races delved so deeply into the Library for weird designs as did the idiosyncratic, ruthless Tandu. Wild protrusions extended from the narrow hull in all directions, a Tandu hallmark.
At one end, however, a blunt, wedge-shaped appendage clashed with the overall impression of careless, cruel delicacy. It didn't seem to fit into the overall design.
Before he could get a better view, the clouds came together, concealing the floating cruiser from sight. The faint hum of powerful engines grew slowly louder, however.
Tom scratched at an itchy five-day growth of beard. The Tandu were bad news. If they were the only ones to show themselves, he would have to set off message bomb number three, to tell Streaker to lock up and get ready for a death-fight.
This was an enemy with whom Mankind had never been able to negotiate. In skirmishes on the Galactic marshes, Terran ships had seldom conquered Tandu vessels, even with the odds in their favor. And, when there were no witnesses around, the Tandu loved to pick fights. Standing orders were to avoid them at all costs, until such time as Tymbrimi advisors could teach human crews the rare knack of beating these masters of the sneak-and-strike.
If the Tandu were the only ones to appear, it also meant be had likely seen his last sunrise. For in setting off a message bomb he'd almost certainly give away his position. The Tandu had clients who could psi-sniff even a thought, if they once caught the mental scent.
Tell you what, Ifni, he thought. You send someone else into this confrontation. I won't insist it be Thennanin. A Jophur fighting-planetoid will suffice. Mix things up here and I promise to say five sutras, ten Hail Marys, and Kiddush when I get home. Okay? I'll even dump some credits in a slot machine, if you like.
He envisioned a Tymbrimi-Human-Synthian battle fleet erupting out of the clouds, blasting the Tandu to fragments and sweeping the sky clear of fanatics. It was a lovely image, although he could think of a dozen reasons why it wasn't likely. For one thing, the Synthians, friendly as they were, wouldn't intervene unless it was a sure thing. The Tymbrimi, for that matter, would probably help Earth defend herself, but wouldn't stick their lovely humanoid necks too far out for a bunch of lost wolflings.
Okay Ifni, you lady of luck and chance. He fingered bomb number three. I'll settle for a single, beat-up, old Thennanin cruiser.
Infinity gave him no immediate answer. He hadn't expected one.
The thrumming seemed to pass right over his head. His hackles rose as the ship's strong-field region swept the area. Its shields screeched at his modest psi sense.
Then the crawling rumble began slowly to recede to his left. Tom looked to the west. The ragged clouds separated just long enough to display the Tandu cruiser — a light destroyer, he now saw, and not really a battleship — only a couple of miles away.
As he watched, the blunt appendage detached from the mother ship and began to drift slowly to the south. Tom frowned. That thing didn't look like the Tandu scout ships he was familiar with. It was a totally different design, stout and stolid, like…
The haze came together again, frustratingly, covering the two ships. Their muttering growl covered the muted grumblings of the nearby volcano.
Suddenly three brilliant streams of green light speared down from the clouds where Tom had last seen the Tandu ship, to hit the sea with flashing
