Rael made her way back along the curved accessways toward the galley and surgery. Her sleeprod was again clipped to her belt. In one hand she held her diagnostic scanner, this time keyed to the heat sensors in the unlikely case there was someone hiding in one of the storage areas.
Nothing showed up, and she moved to the surgery console, and stopped to look around. It was almost familiar— the arrangement of cupboards and slide tables was accessible to humans, but the organization was unlike that which she was used to on most Terran Federation ships. She found a computer console, and looked it over, again surprised by the unfamiliar layout, the width of the keytabs.
She tried a series of tabs, and at last reached a combination that activated the console. Lights flickered. An unfamiliar script flowed across the screen, in a color combination she found odd. Even the prompt was slightly different than she expected.
"Weeks here," came Jasper’s voice, quick and eager. "Fuel is about ninety-eight-percent max."
A moment later Rip’s voice was heard: "Relayed it to the Queen. Stotz is on his way with the fuel tap equipment. Dane? Rael?"
"Cargo hold is full," Dane’s voice reported. "Can’t read the script.
Maybe we can open these boxes later. I just entered the hydro lab—" He stopped, then Rael heard a short intake of breath from the apprentice cargo master.
"Found something?" Rip’s voice was urgent.
"Someone," Dane said gruffly. "Two someones—not human. Ship’s cats. They’re in pretty bad shape."
Rael winced. "I’ll be right there," she promised.
She turned her attention back to the surgery computer. With great care she experimented with key combinations. At last one caused a flicker, and a menu of icons appeared—but next to each entry was a pair of symbols that looked like empty brackets.
She hit the keys that had gotten the results, came up with more empty brackets. "Surgery log seems to have been cleaned out," she reported.
"Ship’s log and navcomp same," came Rip’s voice. "Looks like an organized abandonment."
Rael shook her head as she closed the computer down and moved to the
galley. Again she scanned for known biohazards, but nothing came up on her scanner. She found the galley console and activated it, using the keys that looked most like the active ones in the surgery. She was rewarded with a lit display, which not only included the galley console but also caused lights to flicker on various storage compartments around the little room. But nothing else was to be gleaned from this console.
She retraced her steps, and hurried down to the cargo area. The storage space was larger than the Queen's, and it took a little time to find Dane Thorson.
The cargo apprentice turned away from the console area and fell in step beside her. "Over here," he said.
He led her down a corridor of stacked containers to another hatchway. Rael braced herself—and despite her determination to be detached and professional, when she first saw the two small bodies, her eyes stung. The cats were unmarked by any signs of violence; they lay curled together, quite close to the door. One lifted its head, then the other, and four eyes regarded her weakly.
"Just gave them a few drops of water," Dane said. "Seemed to help."
His tone was apologetic, as if he expected to have made the wrong decision. Rael said, "You did right. I’ll give them a bit more now, and I think we’d best leave them. Craig and I can bring over a case to transport them back to the Queen's lab."
She busied herself with her diagnostic tool, glad for the time to gain control of her emotions. Again the display indicating no known biohazards—of course, there was always the chance of some new, and lethal-to-humans, biotics. They could isolate the cats on board the Queen, and check more carefully as the animals recuperated.
"Looks like they were accidentally shut in," she said, glad her voice, at least, sounded detached.
"Nearly starved," Dane said, nodding.
She carefully dripped a few drops from her water cache onto each cat’s muzzle, and watched the raspy tongues lick it off. When the cats showed no more interest in the water, she detached a thin, light shock blanket
from the equipment in her backpack, snapped it open, then refolded it, gently making a nest for the animals. Even for the short time they had to wait for better care, she wanted them warm.
At last she moved back, and looked around the hydroponics setup.
Dane indicated the rows of plants. "Luckily they left this lab on automatic. The cats must have gotten water by licking moisture off the leaves after they were misted."
Rael stooped to examine several unfamiliar plants. Some of them showed gnaw marks; the cats appeared to have experimented with eating the plants. "There might have been a few vermin in here. Otherwise, it looks like they tried to make do with vegetables." She pointed at a half-eaten, yellow gourdlike shape.
Dane nodded, moving slowly among the plants.
Rael turned in the other direction, and was arrested by the gleam of console lights through dark blue-green leaves. She moved quickly toward it. A tiny console, set into a little cubicle mostly hidden by tall plants and by a high stool, was lit. Directly below it rested a pile of books, holo cubes, and miscellaneous personal paraphernalia. She wondered if these items had sat on the ledge into which the computer console was built—and if the cats had knocked it down.
When she touched the now-familiar key combination, this time the menu offered a row of choices that of course she couldn’t read. "There’s a live log here in the hydro lab," she reported over the general linkup.
"Good," Rip’s voice came over the com. "Nothing up here—everything’s been nulled out."
Rael stared at the screen before her, wondering if this was the only clue to the identity of the ship’s owners. Her first instinct was to download whatever was in this computer, but she didn’t try to extract one of the tiny quantumtapes from the pack at her belt. Whatever kind of data-transfer system this computer had, it didn’t use Terran standards—there was no little round slot to drop a tape cylinder into.
Dane appeared. He half-reached for the console, then pulled his hand back. "Don’t want to risk cutting off the maintenance cycle."
Rael nodded. "Right. We’ll leave this for Tang. If anyone can figure it out, it’s he."
They left the lab, and moved back through the cargo bay. In silence Dane Thorson paced along beside her. She glanced about at stacks of wares in the big bay, and to her surprise she recognized some of the scripts. "Isn’t that Zacathan? And there’s Persian. This ship must have been in the Zatah colonies, or traded for Zatahi goods. But the rest—"
"Most of this is Kanddoyd, I think," Dane said diffidently.
A spurt of amusement made Rael fight against a grin. Of course he would recognize that script. Most of the crew had been studying the sparse data on the Kanddoyd sphere of influence as soon as the Queen had gone into hyper. While Rael had focused on biological information, Dane Thorson and Jan Van Ryke had kept to the cultural end—everything they would need to know to aid them in the prospect of making trade.
That in itself was not amusing. Any good crew crammed available data when heading for new territory. It was his manner, and the fact that—encased as she was in a biohaz suit which was just as sexless as his—he still wouldn’t look at her.
As she stepped closer to a series of oddly shaped containers to get a better look, she worked to make certain her face was absolutely straight, just in case he did glance down into her helmet. Her mind had gone straight back to Canuche, to the outdoor market of Canuche Town, when she had taken a length of gorgeous blue Thornen silk and moved through a few basic steps of an Ibis dance.