“Sure, who could muck livestock out for fifteen years? But it’ll still take eleven months for the horses to be born. if that’s what you’re waiting for.”
“Horses, always. We were promised horses.” Sean sounded wistful as well as emphatic, and she experienced a moment of kindliness toward him.
“You’ll get them, too. My father said so,” she added mendaciously. He said that the ti – the traveling folk were first on the list.”
“We’d better be.” Sean glowered darkly. “Or there’ll be trouble.”
“You see me before you make any trouble here. My da always got on well with your people in Clonmel. Believe me, you’ll get your horses.” She could see that he was skeptical. “Now, mind, I hear that you’ve harmed our creature and I’ll see you don’t, Sean Connell! She held up a warning hand the flat edge in an offensive position. Not that you could catch her. She’s smart, that one. She understands what you’re thinking.”
Sean eyed her, more scornful than skeptical. “You know so much about her?”
“I’m good with animals.” She paused, then grinned. “Just like you are. See you ‘round. And remember about requisitioning!”
She turned and started back down the beach to catch up with Jacob and Chung – just in time to help carry the samples back to the hatchery.
When Sallah Telgar heard the call for volunteers to make up a skeleton crew so that those who had not yet been down to the surface could have a weekend break on Pern, she hesitated until she saw the names of the first three volunteers: Avril, Bart, and Nabhi. That trio did nothing that did not further themselves. Why would they volunteer? Suspicious, she scrawled her name down immediately. Also, she was still curious about what Kenjo had been up to with his fuel economies. The Eujisan had drawn its quota regularly, yet her private calculations indicated a growing balance that had neither been burned up by the Eujisan nor was in the Yoko’s fuel tanks. Very strange. Soon there would be no place on the old Yoko to hide a thimbleful of fuel, much less the volume of the shortfall she had calculated. But Kenjo was not among the volunteers.
All six shuttles went up to relieve the ships’ crews and to bring down more bits and pieces. Sallah flew the Eujisan up with the skeleton crew for the Yoko. Avril had a smile on her face, smug enough to satisfy Sallah that the woman had personal plans for her weekend. Bart Lemos looked apprehensive and fidgeted while Nabhi continued to look supercilious. They were up to something, Sallah was sure. But what it might be she couldn’t imagine.
When Sallah sprang the hatch on the Yoko’s landing deck, she was nearly bowled over by the jubilant men and women waiting to board the Eujisan for their first trip to the surface of their new home. Sallah had never seen a faster loading. Shortly all that would remain of the Yoko would be bare hull and the corridors leading to the bridge, where the mainframe computer banks would remain intact. Most of the computer’s vast memory had been duplicated for use on the surface, but not all – the bulk of the naval and military programs were protected and, in any case, irrelevant. Once passengers and crew left the three spaceships in their orbit, there would be no need to know how to fight space battles.
The volunteers were given their orders by the crew members they were replacing and then the shore-leave party merrily departed.
“Gawd, this place is eerie,” Boris Pahlevi whispered as he and Sallah made their way to the bridge through the echoing corridors which had been stripped of siding and were down to the central plank of flooring.
“Will the last man off roll the plank up behind him?” Sallah asked facetiously. She shuddered when she noticed that the safety hatches between sections had been removed. Lighting had been reduced to three units per corridor. She watched where she put her feet.
“It’s rape, though,” Boris remarked in a lugubrious tone, as he gazed around, “gutting the old girl this way.”
“Ivan the Terrible,” Sallah said. That was the pilots’ nickname for the ship’s quartermaster in charge of the removal process. He’s Alaskan, you know, and a real scrounger scrooge.”
“Tut-tut,” Boris said with a mock stern expression. “We’re all Pernese now, Sal. But what’s Alaskan?”
“Fardles, you is the most iggerant bastard, Boris, even for a second-generation Centauran. Alaska was a territory on Earth, not far from its arctic circle, and cold. Alaskans had a reputation for never throwing anything away. My father never did. Must have been a genetic trait because he was reared on First, although my grandparents were Alaskan.” Sallah sighed with nostalgia. “Dad never threw anything away. I had to chuck the whole nine yards before we shipped out. Eighteen years of accumulated – well, it wasn’t junk, because I got good prices on practically everything in the mountain, but it was some chore. Hercules and the Augean stables were clean in comparison.”
“Hercules?”
“Never mind,” Sallah said, wondering if Boris was teasing her by pretending ignorance of old Earth legends and peoples. Some people had wanted to throw everything out, literature, legend, language, all things that had made people so interestingly different from each other. But wiser, more tolerant heads had prevailed. General Cherry Duff, the colony’s official historian and librarian, had insisted the records of all ethnic written and visual cultures be taken to Pern. Those who had craved a completely fresh start consoled themselves with the fact that anything not valid in the new context would eventually fall into disuse as new traditions were established.
“You never know,” Cherry Duff frequently admonished, “when old information becomes new, viable, and valuable. We keep the whole schmear!” The valiant lady defender of Cygnus III, a healthy woman in her eleventh decade with great-grandchildren making the trip with her on the Buenos Aires, affected idiomatic speech in order to make her points memorable. “Takes up no space at all on the chips we’ve got.
Sallah and Boris found the bridge territory reassuringly intact. Even the danger doors were still in place. Boris took the command chair and asked Sallah to confirm the stability of their orbit. He was an engineer who dabbled in computer programming, and as weekend duty officer, he would probably spend all his time on the mainframe. He was certainly competent to detect and deal with any untoward deviation from orbit. He had welcomed the respite from outdoor work, as he had forgotten to protect a fair skin against sunburn while he was helping to erect temporary power pylons for the hydroelectric unit. He was annoyed with himself for ignoring a simple precaution just because everyone around him had been shucking shirts to get planet-brown.
“Program’s been left up,” Sallah told him, sliding into the chair at the navigator’s position. “The Yoko’s smack dab on orbit.”
“The duty officer really should have remained here until I officially took over,” Boris muttered. Then he exhaled. “But I suppose she was afraid that they’d leave without her. No harm done, at any rate.”
Boris began calling in the other manned stations, confirming the duty personnel from the roster he’d been given. Avril Bitra and Bart Lemos were assigned to Life Support, and Nabhi Nabol was in Supply. While Boris was involved in roll call, Sallah began some discreet checking of her own from the big terminal. She initiated a program to discover who else had been accessing the mainframe.
That sort of internal check was a function of the bridge terminal and not available on any of the others, except the one that had once been in the admiral’s suite. By the time Sallah left the Yoko, she would know who had asked for what, if not why.
“D’you know if they’ve got all the library tapes down below yet?” Boris asked, relaxing in the command chair once the call had been completed and logged in.
“I think General Duff said they are, but why not get your own copies while there’s tape left?”