5 ::: Tom Orley
A tall, dark-haired man swung one-handed from the leg of a bed, a bed that was bolted to the floor in an upside-down room. The floor slanted over his head. His left foot rested precariously on the bottom of a drawer pulled from one of the inverted wall cabinets.
At the sudden yellow flash of the alert light, Tom Orley whirled and grabbed at his holster with his free hand. His needler was half-drawn before he recognized the source of the disturbance. He cursed slowly and re-holstered the weapon. Now what was the emergency? He could think of a dozen possibilities, offhand, and here he was, hanging by one arm in the most awkward part of the ship!
'I initiate contact, Thomas Orley.'
The voice seemed to come from above his right ear. Tom changed his grip on the bed leg to turn around. An abstract three-dimensional pattern swirled a meter away from his face, like multicolored motes caught in a dust devil.
'I suppose you would like to know of the cause of the alarm. Is this correct?'
'You're damned right I do!' he snapped. 'Are we under attack?'
'No.' The colored images shifted. 'This ship is not yet assailed, but Vice-Captain Takkata-Jim has announced an alert. At least five intruder fleets are now in the neighborhood of Kithrup. These squadrons appear now to be in combat not far from the planet.'
Orley sighed. 'So much for quick repairs and a getaway.' He hadn't thought it likely that their hunters would let them escape again. The damaged Streaker had left a noisy trail behind her when she slipped away from the confusion of the ambush at Morgran.
Tom had been helping the crew in the engine room repair Streaker's stasis generator. They had just finished the part calling for detailed hand-eye work, and the moment had come to steal away to the deserted section of the dry-wheel where the Niss computer had been hidden.
The dry-wheel was a band of workrooms and cabins that spun freely when the ship was in space, providing pseudogravity for the humans aboard. Now it was still. This section of upside-down corridors and cabins was abandoned in the inconvenient gravity of the planet.
The privacy suited Tom, though the topsy-turvy arrangement was irksome.
'You weren't to announce yourself unless I switched you on manually,' he said. 'You were to wait for my thumbprint and voice i.d. before letting on you were anything but a standard comm.'
The swirling patterns took on a cubist style. The machine's voice sounded unperturbed. 'Under the circumstances, I took the liberty. If I erred, I am prepared to accept discipline up to level three. Punishment of a higher order will be considered unjustified and be rejected with prejudice.'
Tom allowed himself an ironic smile. The machine would run him in circles if he let it, and he would gain nothing by asserting his titular mastery over it. The Tymbrimi spy who had lent the Niss to him had made it clear that the machine's usefulness was partly based upon its flexibility and initiative, however irritating it became.
'I'll take the level of your error under advisement,' he told the Niss. 'Now, what can you tell me about the present situation?'
'A vague question. I can access the ship's battle computers for you. But that might entail an element of risk.'
'No, you'd better not do that quite yet.' If the Niss tried to inveigle the battle computer during an alert, Creideiki's bridge crew might notice. Tom assumed Creideiki knew about the presence of the Niss aboard his ship, just as the captain knew that Gillian Baskin had her own secret project. But the dolphin commander kept quiet about it, leaving the two of them to their work.
'All right, then. Can you patch me through to Gillian?'
The holo danced with blue specks. 'She is alone in her office. I am placing the call.'
The motes suddenly faded. They were replaced by the image of a blonde woman in her early thirties. She looked puzzled briefly, then her face brightened with a brilliant smile. She laughed.
'Ali, you're visiting your mechanical friend, I see. Tell me, Tom, what does a sarcastic alien machine have that I don't have? You've never gone head over heels so literally for me.'
'Very funny.' Still, her attitude relieved his anxiety over the alert. He had been afraid they would be in combat almost immediately. In a week or so, Streaker might be able to make a good accounting of herself before being destroyed or captured. Right now, she had all the punch of a drugged rabbit.
'I take it the Galactics aren't landing yet.'
Gillian shook her head. 'No, though Makanee and I are standing by in the infirmary just in case. Bridge crew says at least three fleets have popped into space nearby. They immediately started having it out, just like at Morgran. We can only hope they'll annihilate each other.'
'Not much hope of that, I'm afraid.'
'Well, you're the tactician of the family. Still, it might be weeks before there is a victor to come down after us. There will be deals and last-minute alliances. Well have time to think of something.'
Tom wished he could share her optimism. As the family tactician, it was his job to 'think of something.'
'Well, if the situation's not urgent…'
'I don't think it is. You can spend a little while longer with your roomie there — my electronic rival. I'll get even by getting intimate with Herbie.'
Tom could only shake his head and let her have her joke. Herbie was a cadaver — their one tangible prize from the derelict fleet. Gillian had determined that the alien corpse was over two billion years old. The ship's mini-Library seemed to have seizures every time they asked what race it had once belonged to.
'All right, then. Tell Creideiki I'll be right down, okay?'
'Sure, Tom. They're waking him now. I'll tell him I last saw you hanging around somewhere.' She gave him a wink and switched off:
Tom watched the place where her image had been, and once again wondered what he had done to deserve a woman like her.
'Out of curiosity, Thomas Orley, I am interested in some of the undertones of this last conversation. Am I right in assuming that some of these mild insults Dr. Baskin conveyed fell into the category of affectionate teasing? My Tymbrimi builders are telempathic, of course, but they, also, seem to indulge in this pastime. Is it part of a mating process? Or is it a friendship test of some sort?'
'A little of both, I guess. Do the Tymbrimi really do the same sort of…' Tom shook himself. 'Never mind about that! My arms are getting tired and I've got to get below quickly. Have you anything else to report?'
'Not of major significance to your survival or mission.'
'I take it, then, that you haven't managed to coax the ship's mini-Library to deliver anything on Herbie or the derelict fleet.'
The holo flowed into sharp geometries. 'That is the main problem, isn't it? Dr. Baskin asked me the same question when she last checked in on me, thirteen hours ago.'
'And did you give her any more direct an answer than you're giving me?'
'Finding ways to bypass the access programming on this ship's mini-Library is the reason I was put aboard in the first place. I would tell you if I had succeeded.' The machine's disembodied voice was dry enough to desiccate melons. 'The Tymbrimi have long suspected that the Library Institute is less than neutral — that the branch Libraries sold by them are programmed to be deficient in very subtle ways, to put troublesome races at a disadvantage.
'The Tymbrimi have been working on this problem since days when your ancestors wore animal skins, Thomas Orley. It was never expected we would achieve anything more on this trip than a gathering of a few shards of new data, and perhaps elimination of a few minor barriers.'
Orley understood how the long-lived machine could take such a patient perspective. Still, he found he resented it. It would be nice to think something had come of all the grief Streaker and her crew had fallen into. 'After all the surprises we've encountered, this voyage must have served up more than just a few new bits for you to crunch,' he suggested.
'The propensity of Earthlings to get into trouble, and to learn thereby, was the reason my owners agreed to this mad venture in the first place — although no one ever expected such a chain of unusual calamities as have befallen this ship. Your talents were under-rated.'
There was no way to answer that. Tom's arms had begun to hurt. 'Well, I'd better get back. In an emergency I'll contact you via ship's comm.'
'Of course.'
Orley let go and landed in a crouch by the closed doorway, a rectangle high on one steeply sloping wall.
'Dr. Baskin has just passed on word to me that Takkata-Jim has ordered the survey party to return to the ship,' the Niss spoke abruptly. 'She thought you would want to know'
Orley cursed. Metz might have had a hand in that. How were they to repair the ship if the crew weren't allowed to go looking for the raw materials they needed? Creideiki's strongest reason for coming to Kithrup had been the abundance of pre-refined metals in an oceanic environment accessible to dolphins. If Hikahi's prospectors were called back the danger had to be severe… or someone was panicking.
Tom turned to go, but paused and looked up. 'Niss, we must know what it is the Galactics think we found.'
The sparkles were muted. ' I have done a thorough search of the open files in this ship's onboard micro-branch Library for any record that might shed light on the mystery of the derelict fleet, Thomas Orley. Aside from a few vague similarities between the patterns we saw on those gigantic hulls and some ancient cult symbols, I can find no support for a hypothesis that the ships we found are in any way connected to the fabled Progenitors.'
'But you found nothing to contradict it, either?'
'Correct. The derelicts might or might not be linked with the one legend which binds all oxygen-breathing races in the five galaxies.'
'It could be we found huge bits of flotsam of almost no historical significance, then.'
'True. At the other extreme, you may have made the biggest archaeological and religious find of the age. The mere possibility helps to explain the battle that is shaping up in this solar system. The refusal of the ship's mini-Library to give more details is indicative of how many of the Galactic cultures feel about events so long ago. So long as this ship is the sole repository of information about the derelict fleet, the survey vessel Streaker remains a great prize, valued by every brand of fanatic.'
Orley had hoped the Niss would find evidence to make their discovery innocuous. Such proof might have been used to get the ETs to leave them alone. But if the derelict fleet was really as important as it seemed, Streaker would have to find a way to get the information to Earth, and let wiser heads figure out what to do with
