it.
'You just keep contemplating, then,' he told the Niss. 'Meanwhile I'll do my best to see that the Galactics stay off our backs. Now, can you tell me…'
'Of course I can,' the Niss interrupted again. 'The corridor outside is clear. Don't you think I would let you know if anyone were outside?'
Tom shook his head, certain the machine had been programmed to do this now and again. It would be typical of the Tymbrimi. Earth's greatest allies were also practical jokers. When a dozen other calamitous priorities had been settled, he intended taking a monkey wrench to the machine, and explaining the mess to his Tymbrimi friends as 'an unfortunate accident.'
As the door panel slipped aside, Tom grabbed the rim and swung out to drop onto the dim hallway ceiling below. The door hummed shut automatically. Red alert lights flashed at intervals down the gently curved corridor.
All right, he thought. Our hopes for a quick getaway are dashed, but I've already thought out some contingency plans.
A few he had discussed with the captain. One or two he had kept to himself.
I'll have to set a few into motion, he thought, knowing from experience that chance diverts all schemes. As likely as not, it will be something totally unexpected that turns up to offer us our last real hope.
6 ::: Galactics
The first phase of the fight was a free-for-all. A score of warring factions scratched and probed at each other, exploring for weaknesses. Already a number of wrecks drifted in orbit torn and twisted and ominously luminous. Glowing clouds of plasma spread along the path of battle, and jagged metal fragments sparkled as they tumbled.
In her flagship, a leathery queen looked upon viewscreens that showed her the battlefield. She lay on a broad, soft cushion and stroked the brown scales of her belly in contemplation.
The displays that rimmed Krat's settee showed many dangers. One panel was an overlay of curling lines, indicating zones of anomalous probability. Others pointed out where the slough from psychic weapons was still dangerous.
Clusters of lights were the other fleets, now regrouping as the first phase drew to a close. Fighting still raged on the fringes.
Krat lounged on a cushion of vletoor skin. She shifted her weight to ease the pressure in her third abdomen. Battle hormones always accelerated the quickening within her. It was an inconvenience which, in ancient days, had forced her female ancestors to stay in the nest, leaving to stupid males the fighting.
No longer, though.
A small, bird-like creature approached her side. Krat took a ling-plum from the tray it proffered. She bit it and savored the juices that ran over her tongue and down her whiskers. The little Forski put down the tray and began to sing a crooning ballad about the joys of battle.
The avian Forski had been uplifted to full sapiency, of course. It would have been against the Code of Uplift to do less with a client race. But while they could talk, and even fly spacecraft in. a pinch, independent ambition had been bred out of them. They were too useful as domestics and entertainers to be fated anything but specialization. Adaptability might interfere with their graceful and intelligent performance of those functions.
One of her smaller screens suddenly went dark. A destroyer in the Soro rearguard had been destroyed. Krat hardly noticed. The consolidation had been inexpensive so far.
The command room was divided into pie sections. From the center, Krat could look into every baffled unit from her couch of command. Her crew bustled about, each a member of a Soro client race, each hurrying to do her will in its own sub-specialty.
From the sectors for navigation, combat, and detection, there was a quieting of the hectic battle pace at last. In planning, though, she saw increased activity as the staff evaluated developments, including the new alliance between the Abdicator and Transcendor forces.
A Paha sub-officer poked its head out of detection sector. Under hooded eyes, Krat watched it dash to a food station, snatch a steaming mug of amoklah, and hurry back to its post.
The Paha race had been allowed more racial diversity than the Forski, to enhance their value as ritual warriors. It left them less tractable than suited her, but it was a price one paid for good fighters. Krat decided to ignore the incident. She listened to the little Forski sing of the coming victory — of the glory that would be Krat's when she captured the Earthlings, and finally squeezed their secrets out of them.
Klaxons shrieked. The Forski leapt into the air in alarm and fled to its cubbyhole. Suddenly there were running Paha everywhere.
'Tandu raider!' the tactical officer shouted. 'Ships two through twelve, it has appeared in your midst! Take evasive maneuvers! Quickly!'
The flagship bucked as it, too, went into a wild turn to avoid a spread of missiles. Krat's screens showed a pulsing, danger-blue dot — the daring Tandu cruiser that had popped into being within her fleet — which was even now pouring fire into the Soro ships!
Curse their damnable probability drives! Krat knew that nobody else could move about as quickly as the Tandu, because no other species was willing to take such chances!
Krat's mating claw throbbed in irritation. Her Soro ships were so busy avoiding missiles, nobody was firing back!
'Fools!' Krat hissed into her communicator. 'Ships six and ten, hold your ground and concentrate your fire on the obscenity!'
Then, before her words reached her sub-captains, before any Soro even fired back, the terrible Tandu ship began to dissolve on its own! One moment it was there, ferocious and deadly, ranging in on a numerous but helpless foe. The next instant the spindly destroyer was surrounded by a coruscating, discolored halo of sparks. Its shield folded, and the cruiser fell into itself like a collapsing tower of sticks.
With a brilliant flash, the Tandu vanished, leaving a cloud of ugly vapor behind. Through her own ship's shields, Krat could feel an awful psychic roar.
We were lucky, Krat realized as the psi-noise slowly faded. It was not without reason that other races avoided the Tandus' methods. But if that ship had lasted a few moments longer…
No harm was done, and Krat noted that her crew had all done their jobs. Some of them were slow, however, and these must be punished…
She beckoned the chief tactician, a tall, burly Paha. The warrior stepped toward her. He tried to maintain a proud bearing, but his drooping cilia told that he knew what to expect. Krat rumbled deep in her throat.
She started to speak, but in the emotion of the moment, the Soro commander felt a churning pressure within. Krat grunted and writhed, and the Paha officer fled as she panted on the vletoor cushion. Finally she howled and found relief. After a moment, she bent forward to retrieve the egg she had laid.
She picked it up, punishments and battles temporarily banished from her mind. In an instinct that predated her species uplift by the timid Hul, two million years before, she responded to the smell of pheromones and licked the birthing slime from the tiny air-cracks which seamed the leathery surface of the egg.
Krat licked it a few extra times for pleasure. She rocked the egg slowly in an ancient, untampered reflex of motherhood.
7 ::: Toshio
There was a ship involved, of course. All of his dreams since the age of nine had dealt with ships. Ships, at first, of plasteel and jubber, sailing the straits and archipelagos of Calafia, and later ships of space. Toshio had dreamt of ships of every variety, including those of the powerful Galactic patron races, which he had hoped one day to see.
Now he dreamt of a dinghy.
The tiny human-dolphin colony of his homeworld had sent him out with Akki riding on the outrigger, his Calafian Academy button shining brightly under Alph's sunshine. It started out a balmy day.
Only soon the weather darkened, and all around became the same color as the water. The sea grew bilious, then black, then changed to vacuum, and suddenly there were stars everywhere.
He worried about air. Neither he nor Akki had suits. It was hard, trying to breathe vacuum!
He was about to turn for home when he saw them chasing him. Galactics, with heads of every shape and color, long, sinuous arms, or tiny, grasping claws, or worse — were rowing toward him steadily. The sleek prows of their boats were as lambent as the starlight.
'What do you want?' he cried out as he paddled hard to get away. (Hadn't the boat started out with a motor?)
'Who is your master?!' They shouted in a thousand different tongues. 'Is that He beside you?'
'Akki's a fin! Fins are our clients! We uplifted them and set them free!'
'Then they are free,' the Galactics replied, drawing closer. 'But who uplifted you? Who set you free?'
'I don't know!' he screamed. 'Maybe we did it ourselves!' He stroked harder as the Galactics laughed. He struggled to breathe the hard vacuum. 'Leave me alone! Let me go home!'
Suddenly the Fleet loomed ahead. The ships seemed bigger than moons — bigger than stars. They were dark and silent, and their aspect seemed to daunt even the Galactics.
Then the foremost of the ancient globes began to open. Toshio realized, then, that Akki was gone. His boat was gone. The ETs were gone.
He wanted to scream, but air was very dear.
A piercing whistle brought him around in a painful, disorienting instant. He sat up suddenly and felt the sled bounce unhappily with the motion. While his eyes made a blurred jumble of the horizon, a stiff breeze blew against his face. The tang of Kithrup greeted his nostrils.
'About time, Ladder-runner. You gave us quite a scare.'
Toshio wavered, then saw Hikahi floating nearby, inspecting him with one eye.
'Are you okay, little Sharp-Eyes?'
'Um… yes. I think so.'
