“I think he means identifies,” said the woman who’d just spoken. “They identify themselves. Anybody can see it. This is interesting. Captain, you clearly have a Hale job, but you talk a lot like a Johnson. How were you chosen?”
Persoff, who was starting to worry that he’d been hit a lot harder than he’d realized, said, “I took placement exams to qualify for the Academy, and after I graduated, the people in charge put me where they needed me.”
“They all sound like Wellses,” she said, to general agreement. “A Wells helps out wherever she can be useful,” she explained.
“She?”
“They’re usually women, like Blackers or Schafers.”
As Persoff opened his mouth, Tom said, “Blackers keep track of things and give advice. A Schafer trains.”
“They’re teachers?”
“They train children, yes, but they train anything. Animals, plants-the plant that produced the sutures I used on you, for instance. Didn’t hurt coming out, did it? When we landed it started out as flax, and the fibers would have soaked up some of your blood, which would have clotted. We have bad stories about those days. There were people hurt in the last landing.” He looked grim.
Persoff could just imagine. “How many landing craft did you have working?”
“One,” said Tom.
Nobody added anything to that. Persoff sought anything to say that didn’t involve asking if anybody had ended up being left on the Galaxias. They would learn that anyway, if McCabe’s plan worked. He remembered about the trees. “I wanted to talk about-”
“They’re here!” someone shouted from down on the beach, and most of the people around him left. Six remained.
The woman who’d spoken first said, “It’ll take a while to sort out protocol. Meanwhile, do you prefer Blacker or Wells?”
“For what?”
“Sex. It’s getting really difficult to find partners with low consanguinity, and yours is zero. So, Blacker or Wells?”
“Uh, Newmar, as a matter of fact. She’s our ship’s master at arms.”
This was greeted with glum expressions. The woman who’d spoken just before the last said, “You have female crewmen.”
“Nine, in a current complement of seventy. We lost six men when your ship fired on us.”
“Oh hell,” she said. “I don’t think anyone expected to be found by anyone but the kzinti. I’m awfully sorry about that.” There was a chorus of agreement.
Lacking a useful comment-“me too” seemed tactless-he said, “What do I call you?”
She looked stunned for a moment. “You don’t know our names, of course! I’m Sophia, this is Betsy, that’s Liz, she’s Susan, and they’re Eva and Donna.” She’d alternated between types, which he took to be Blackers and Wellses. Blackers seemed more intense, Wellses more amiable.
“Hey,” said Betsy, who’d spoken to him first, “their ship only had a complement of seventy-six.”
“Seventy-seven. And forty dolphin fighter pilots. Those died when the kzin ship blew.” They’d been the reason the Yorktown hadn’t included any Wunderkzin, since dolphins became insanely hostile in the presence of kzinti. There had been training incidents.
Betsy said, “But the only way that could be enough people is if you have hyperdrive.” They all went quiet.
“We do.”
It was half an hour or so before he had another quiet moment. By that time they’d learned more than he’d realized he knew about hyperdrive and hyperwave. The first interruption came when a large man-no, a man the size of Tom or Ron, who had built himself up with exercise-came over, shook hands without using a neurotically insecure bonecrusher, and said, “I’m Henry, currently the senior Hale. Understand your ship’s damaged. We’ll be glad to help. How many of us can you take back on this trip?”
“It depends on whether we can fix the Galaxias once we’re in orbit. My storesmaster thinks we probably can, and we have better technology than when it was built, so conceivably thousands. How many of you are there to take back?”
Henry looked at Sophia, who said, “Last count was four thousand nine hundred and three, breeding and sterile. Call it five thousand until we can check.”
“I have a crewman who says the Galaxias was designed to hold up to six thousand,” Persoff said.
“That was before the battle,” said Henry.
Sophia recited: “‘Ship’s original complement was three hundred and two, with thirty-eight survivors after the collision. Thirty-one were in coldsleep and had to be awakened via emergency protocol, resulting in impaired cognition. The remaining seven included the two stowaways, who were instrumental in getting the Galaxias back in working order and the awakened into functional condition, respectively. When the ship reached a system with an adaptable planet, the only survivor of the original mission was the pilot. He died bringing the last of the supplies and the ship’s complement, then numbered one hundred and three, to the surface. He was the only casualty of the ferry trips.” She looked at Persoff and smiled. “That was Stuart William Denver. It was by his order that records were kept of accomplishments, and full acknowledgement given to stowaways Marion Johnson and Russelle Wells, without whose work none of us would have lived to get here. Stuart with a ‘u,’ Marion with an ‘o,’ Russelle with a final ‘e.’ The distinctions are made because one name derives from a profession, and both other names were then considered sexually ambiguous.”
Persoff nodded, wishing he could think of something sufficiently respectful to say about that pilot. Then he frowned. “Johnson, Denver, Hale, Wells, Blacker, and Schafer make six,” he said. “Who was the seventh survivor?”
“Foote,” said a voice from outside the firelight. An old-looking woman stepped forward, propping herself up on two canes. “James Foote.”
“Foote with a final ‘e,’” said Sophia.
“He financed the Galaxias,” said the old woman. “He was a planner.”
“One man paid for that thing himself?” Persoff said, thinking of the Cyclopean ship he’d seen so briefly.
The old woman smiled. “He was a good planner. My name is Eden. Currently I’m the senior Foote. There are seldom more than eight or nine of us. Everyone else is good at some form of implementation, but original planning is too abstruse.”
“Then I guess you’re the one I need to talk with about cutting the trees,” he said.
Everyone else had been quiet, but up to then they’d been breathing. It got quieter.
“Out of the question,” Eden said. “Those are our history. The first of them were planted by the Pilot’s own hand.”
“The thing is, to get off the planet we’ll need to build a launch catapult.”
“Do it on another island.”
“We can’t move the power plant off this one.”
“We’ll help you make others. There may not be much smeltable iron, but there’s sure plenty of thorite.”
“All the other islands are volcanic.”
“There are ways to drain off the magma, we’ve just never gone to the trouble.”
“They’ll take time.”
“We’ve waited a couple hundred years so far.”
“Goddammit, we’re forty years overdue on our mission already!” Persoff bellowed, then shut up, ashamed.
She frowned. “What’s your mission?”
“We were supposed to attack the kzin home system, but we were attacked before we got there and flung this way when their gravity planer blew.”
“Just like us,” said Eva.
Eden said, “You mean, you need to cut the trees to beat the kzinti?”
He actually felt the air go out of him. “Uh, well, yes.”
“Then cut the trees,” she said, and her voice broke. She turned to Henry and said, “Go tell the rest of the Hales, and make sure everyone’s at the first trees, first thing, morning after tomorrow. Captain Persoff, there’s something we’ll want to do before you start cutting. It’s going to take us at least a few days. Will that delay you, or are there other steps you can take while we’re doing that?”
Things were changing too fast for him. “I doubt we’d be able to start cutting for weeks,” he said.