Greenberg drew himself to attention and spoke to the air: "Commence lift-off sequence."
"Automatic checklist commencing," the ship's computer answered.
"Wait for us to leave this cramped vessel, you fool," the Foitani technician exclaimed. "We are not ordered to fly to Gilver." For once, Jennifer saw an agitated Foitan.
"Sorry. Computer, cancel lift-off sequence," Greenberg ordered. He turned back to the technician. "You did tell me to lift off at once, did you not?"
"Yes, but?" The Foitan gave up. Along with his companion, he hastily departed from the Harold Meeker.
Greenberg grinned at Jennifer. "The best way to confuse them is to take them perfectly literally when they don't want you to. Only trouble is, they're so literal-minded themselves that you don't get as many chances as you'd like." The grin changed shape, just a little. "Which is true of other things as well. Where were we when we got so rudely interrupted?"
Jennifer stepped close to him, took his hand, and guided it. "I think," she whispered, "you were right about here."
The trip from Odern to Gilver was about as long as the one from Saugus to Odern had been. Other than that, the two journeys held no similarity. This time, Jennifer had pleasant human company aboard a human ship. All the facilities were designed for her species; she'd been glad to discover that the Harold Meeker's sanitary supplies did include tampons.
She studied the material Dargnil Dargnil Lin had taken from Odern's library. The Foitani of Odern did very much seem to be spiritual descendants of their long-destroyed imperial ancestors: they were stern, humorless, efficient, and basically unwilling to recognize other species as anything but creatures to be exploited. I can testify to that, she thought.
Nothing in the data gave her any great insight into the Great Unknown. If the Foitani thought she'd step off the Harold Meeker with the answer to their problem all wrapped up with a bow around it, they were going to be disappointed. She took malicious glee at the idea of disappointing them, glee tempered only by the realization that disappointed Foitani were also liable to be dangerous Foitani.
The idea of stepping off the Harold Meeker without the answer made something else occur to her. "What became of the Flying Festoon, Bernard?" she asked. "Why aren't you still flying it?"
"I sold it after that first trip you took with me," he said, shrugging. "Marya and Pavel both reached master status after that run, and they wanted commands of their own. I could have kept it and hired on some less experienced crewfolk, I suppose, but I didn't feel like it. So I sold it and got this smaller ship. I'm a jack-of-all-trades and I like my own company pretty well, so I thought I'd make a few runs by myself. I was turning a profit till this mess with the Foitani blew up. If we can figure out the Great Unknown, I'll make one yet. So will you."
Jennifer sighed. She'd been a trader long enough that turning a profit was important to her, too. She wondered if it was important enough to mean she had to satisfy the Foitani after all. Maybe it was. If they kept their bargain and let her take her pay in trade goods, she was more confident than ever that she could squeeze them till their black, ball-bearing eyes popped.
But she was not just a trader; and she didn't want to be a full-time trader. She spent a lot of time with her reader in front of her face, going through Middle English science fiction both to keep her grasp of the language sharp and to see if any of the science-fiction writers, with their elastic minds, had imagined a race analogous to the Foitani. That was a better hope than wading through the xenanthropology manuals: a glance there had told her what she already knew, that none of the other races with which humanity was acquainted resembled the blue-skinned aliens at all. Besides, Middle English was more fun to read than the manuals.
"Any luck?" Greenberg asked hopefully when she came up for air one day about halfway through the trip to Gilver.
She had to shake her head. "Nothing so far."
"Keep looking. I know how I used to sneer at you for reading that stuff, but the ideas you got from it really came in handy on L'Rau."
"I used ancient literature to help me on Athet, too: Sherlock Holmes it was that time, not properly science fiction at all. As somebody?Niven, I think it was?said back in the twentieth century, abstract knowledge never goes to waste."
Greenberg knew something about the twentieth century, but not enough. "Niven? I thought he was an actor, not one of your writers." The misunderstanding took several minutes to clear up. Finally Jennifer projected pictures of both men. "No, they're definitely not the same fellow," Greenberg admitted.
"There, you see?" she said. "They?" She stopped with a squawk, grabbing for the back of the sofa bed?the Harold Meeker was lurching under her feet as if caught on the ground during an earthquake. She felt the hair on her arms and at the back of her neck prickle up in alarm. Ships in hyperdrive had no business lurching. What was there to run into?
The viewscreen had been dark all through the journey; in hyperdrive, what was there to see? It was dark still, but dark in a different way, dark with the velvety blackness of space. A couple of stars gleamed, like tiny jewels set on the velvet.
Greenberg and Jennifer stared at each other. "Status report!" he snapped.
"Ship has returned to normal space," the computer answered. "Reason unknown."
They looked at each other again, this time fearfully. If they couldn't get back into hyperdrive, the way home was laser driver, light-sail, and frozen sleep. Inside human space, that was feasible; every human planet listened for rescue beacons and maintained rescue ships. Starting out from somewhere in the middle of the Foitani sphere, though, they could travel for ten thousand years before they ever got back to the edge of human space.
"Condition of hyperdrive engine?" Greenberg said urgently.
After a moment, the computer reported, "All systems appear to be performing satisfactorily. The hyperdrive, however, is not functional."
Greenberg made hair-tearing gestures. Jennifer stifled a nervous laugh?she wondered if he'd really pulled his hair before he went bald. Just then, what looked like a supernova blossomed in the viewscreen. Jennifer threw up her hands to protect her eyes. "Radiation!" the computer screeched. "Protective screens?" There was a pause of several seconds. "?holding."
The flat voice of a translator came from the comm speaker. "Foitani ship Horzefalus Kwef to human ship Harold Meeker. You may proceed in normal operation."
"First tell us what the hell just happened," Greenberg said. His own voice was shaky; Jennifer blamed him not at all.
"We have successfully destroyed a hyperdrive trap that dates from the days of the Great Ones. As soon as a ship is forcibly returned to normal space, a normal-space missile left behind in the area homes on it. That missile is now detonated. You may proceed."
For the third time in a couple of minutes, Jennifer and Greenberg stared at each other. She was not surprised that he found words first: "There's no way you can pull a ship straight out of hyperdrive like that!"
"On the contrary," the Foitan aboard Horzefalus Kwef answered, "there is a way. You have just seen it demonstrated. Our science has not succeeded in reconstructing what that way is. I gather from what I infer to be your surprise that human science has not either. But the Great Ones knew. I tell you once more, you may proceed. Failure to do so will be construed as lack of good faith."
"We're going, we're going," Greenberg said. He gave the computer the necessary orders. The Harold Meeker had no trouble returning to hyperdrive. Greenberg gaped at the blank black viewscreen and shook his head. He spoke to the computer again. "Save multiple copies of all data pertaining to this incident."