She had never been unfaithful to her husband, and she knew with absolute certainty that she never would.
Why then did she find herself watching Mehlid so often, and with such interest? It was wrong-wrong and uncomfortably juvenile-and yet she couldn't stop.
A surge of anger flowed in to cover the guilt. It was Pahli's fault, she told herself blackly; Pahli's and the military's. If they would just let the Susa stay on patrol around Kohinoor instead of sending it out on so many deep-space surveys, she would have a man around the house more often. Pahli didn't have to keep accepting these assignments, either.
No. She was being unfair, and she knew it. At least some of the tension on Kohinoor was due to the lack of new frontiers, to the general feeling that there was nowhere else to go. None of the other twenty-eight bodies in Kohinoor's system was habitable, and the grand experiment with orbiting space colonies had been horribly and tragically ended two wars ago. If Pahli and his crew ever found a suitable world out there, the results would be well worth one woman's minor inconvenience. On the heels of that thought came another, more sobering one: if world war broke out the first battles would be fought in space... and even small ships like the Susa would be prime targets.
With an effort, Narda pushed her fears from her mind. The news survey would be over now, and some music would help her mood. "Radio controclass="underline" on," she called. She was in luck; they were playing something soft and peaceful. Picking up one of the dirty dishes, she sent an involuntary glance through the window. Good; Mehlid was out of sight. He was easy to ignore when not visible. Placing the dish in the cleaner's rack, she thought about Pahli. What was he doing now, she wondered... and was he thinking of her?
Pahli Jalal's thoughts were, in fact, a dozen light-years from his wife. Specifically, they were on the massive object some fifty thousand kilometers off the Susa's starboard bow.
"No chance that it belongs to Lorikhan or any of the others, is there?" he asked Ahmar, his aide, as he studied the image on the telescope screens.
"None, sir." Peering at his bank of displays, Ahmar touched a button and then shook his head.
"Completely unknown configuration and space-normal drive spectrum. Scanner Section reports their star drive probably works on the same principles as ours, but it's definitely not a standard Burke system." He glanced at the commander. "Are we going to make contact?"
"None, sir." Peering at his bank of displays, Ahmar touched a button and then shook his head.
"Completely unknown configuration and space-normal drive spectrum. Scanner Section reports their star drive probably works on the same principles as ours, but it's definitely not a standard Burke system." He glanced at the commander. "Are we going to make contact?"
"Looks like the decision's been made," Pahli said to Ahmar.
"We could attack, sir, or even run," First Office Cyrilis pointed out. "Or both; we could fire a torpedo salvo and be gone before they even knew the missiles were on the way."
Pahli and Ahmar exchanged glances, and Pahli felt his jaw tighten momentarily. Fight or run-it was always the same reaction to every problem. When, he wondered, would humanity learn to solve conflicts with understanding and mutual respect instead of with animal reflexes? "Recommendation noted, Lieutenant.
We'll hold orbit here and see what they want."
"Yes, sir. Recommend we put weapons stations on full alert anyway, Commander. Just in case."
Eyes still on the screens, Pahli waved an impatient hand. "All right. See to it."
Cyrilis saluted and floated across to the main intercom board. Sotto voce, Ahmar said, "I hope he doesn't blow them out of the sky before they even have a chance to say hello."
Pahli shrugged. "I wouldn't worry about that. He's got better combat nerves than either of us."
"Commander!" the scanner chief reported suddenly. "UV laser hitting us; coming from the other ship.
Low-power, too diffuse to be a weapon. It seems to be frequency-modulated."
Pahli threw a tight smile at Ahmar. "I think they've said hello. Get a recorder on that laser and turn Cryptography's computers loose on it. I think there's also a package of basic language instruction on file, isn't there?"
Ahmar nodded. "Disk file Ninety-three something, for opening communication in case another Earth ship ever came out here."
"Start beaming it across with one of our own communication lasers. It'll prove we're interested in talking, even if they can't understand any of the tape."
The unknown ship took up a parallel course some five hundred kilometers from the Susa; and for six hours the two ships did a slow promenade as the lasers continued their information exchange. And it was the unknown, not the Susa, that solved its puzzle first.
"I greet you, Human," the bridge speaker boomed out in a voice like flat gray paint. "I am called Drymnu."
The words seemed to echo through Pahli's head. It was indeed as he'd half-expected: no tenth-generation human ship, but a truly alien craft. Kohinoor's first contact with another race... With as much poise as he could manage, he touched the proper button on his board. "Drymnu ship, greetings," he said, his mouth dry. "This is Commander Pahli Jalal of the starship Susa, servant to the Hasar Nation.
Have I the privilege of addressing your captain?"
The alien's abruptness took Pahli aback somewhat. "Well, we'll be happy to assist as much as possible," he said, motioning to Ahmar. The aide had anticipated him, and was already tying Cryptography into the conversation. "Please explain the problem."
"First, I appear to have found more than one way to address you: Human, Commander Pahli Jalal, and Hasar Nation. Which is correct, or do I misread? In a congruent manner, which reference word is correct: you, him, or her? And how do I and we correspond?"
Pahli frowned. "All the words are correct in different contexts. 'You' refers to a person being addressed or spoken to, while 'him' and 'her' are used when speaking of a third person."
There was a pause as the other seemed to digest that. "But does third person not refer to a separate entity not part of oneself? Surely there is insufficient space in your craft for two of you to exist."
Pahli cut himself out of the circuit and turned to Cyrilis, who was peering over the scanner chief's shoulder. "Just how big is this alien, anyway?" he asked.
The other hunched his shoulders. "Several thousand of us could fit comfortably aboard that ship. He can't be that big-square-cube laws would never have let him evolve. We've got to be misunderstanding him."
Pahli nodded and touched the switch again. "We also seem to be misreading," he said. "We are all of one species, but there are over one hundred eighty persons aboard this craft. Does that help?"
"This is not posheliz-scsit-khe-fzeee-" The speaker squealed unintelligibly for a second and then cut off sharply.
"What was that?" Ahmar whispered.
"I don't know. I must have said something wrong," Pahli answered. "Cyrilis, put all defense systems on full alert." The other nodded, and a tense silence descended on the bridge.
When the break came it was almost an anticlimax. "You are a fragmented race," the speaker said, once again in a flat monotone. "Each of your members is distinct from the others. Is this true?"
A strange shiver ran down Pahli's spine. The implications of such a question... "Yes, that's true. I, uh, take it you're different?"
"I am one. Aboard this craft is a single mind, a single purpose, with eighteen thousand two hundred twenty-six physiologically distinct units. Never before has a fragmented race survived its intraspecies warfare to reach the stars. That has always been impossible. Where are you from, and how have you accomplished this?"