“This object,” the ship’s officer said, “is going to explode in about half an hour.”
“Twenty-eight minutes,” the computer said.
“Okay, twenty-eight minutes,” Carter said. “The explosion is likely to be powerful enough to be inconvenient.”
“You want us to disarm it?” one of the engineers asked.
“Can’t,” Carter said. “It’s organic. Biological. For some reason it’s building up heat. Enough heat and ka-blooie.”
“Roger that,” the other engineer said. “We’ll just pull up the deck plate it’s hooked to and carry it… well, what do you want us to do with it?”
“Space it, and fast,” Carter said.
“Hold on,” the young diplomat said. His normally dark complexion had turned almost as white as those of the ship’s crew. “You can’t just space a diplomat from another species. There will be letters of protest. Speeches in the all-creatures assembly. There might even be an exchange of notes!”
“And just what do you think will happen,” the ship’s officer asked amiably, “if this thing explodes and damages some more of the Xtees?”
Gordon thought about that. Finally, he said, “Go ahead and get rid of it.”
The two subengineers slapped screwdriver tips onto the end of their power arms and began unbolting the deck section. As they worked, Gordon took out his hushphone and spoke into it for a few minutes.
“Shouldn’t you go confer, or whatever it is you do, with the Husker delegation?” Carter asked, after the young diplomat ended his communication.
“I thought about that,” Gordon said. “But I don’t want to be haggling with a diplomat many grades my senior over this. Enough time would pass for a hundred of these things to go off before I got anywhere.”
Carter gave him a considering look. “Well, at least you’re not completely stupid,” the ship’s officer said. “My old granny always told me it was better to ask for forgiveness than permission.”
“Besides,” Gordon said, “I just sent a laser burst to the office on Ricketts. Maybe I’ll hear from Tulk before I have to meet with the Unknown Origin 37s.”
Carter laughed.
“Not likely,” he said. “Bureaucrats are the same everywhere. Nobody on Ricketts is going to want to touch this mess for fear they’ll get some on them.”
The two men watched the engineers take up bolts. When they had finished, they fitted their power arms with grapples, pulled up the section of deck containing what was perhaps a dead Husker, and prepared to carry it off.
“Couldn’t we just stick that in a stasis tube until we figure out something better?” the young diplomat asked.
The two engineers looked at one another.
“Not enough time to modify one, even if we knew how,” one of them said.
“But if you’re worried about spacing this,” the other said, “well, if we could get it open and vent the heat, we wouldn’t have to.”
They looked at one another again.
“Electrical charge,” one said.
“Low voltage should do it,” said the other.
The ship’s officer cleared his throat.
“I said space it,” he said.
“Yes, but then you would, wouldn’t you,” said one of them. “You’re not an engineer.”
The two of them moved off, balancing the deck plate between them.
“Computer,” Carter said, “maybe it would be a good idea if you kept an eye on those two. Say, an on-command display?”
“Right you are, Fourth Officer Carter,” the computer said.
Carter looked at Gordon, and said, “You’re the diplomat. Now what?”
Gordon gave a theatrical sigh. There wasn’t any help for it but to start taking his medicine. He could see the end of the career he’d just started staring him right in the eye.
“Now, I guess I’ll have to go talk to the Unknown Origin 37 delegation and see if I can find out what happened,” he said. “We’re just assuming that this is a dead member of the delegation, after all. Would you like to come along?”
“Love to,” the ship’s officer said. “Just let me get a power suit. And, Computer, why don’t you join us? I’ll explain it to the captain.”
Carter was back in a few minutes wearing an exoskeleton, and the two of them proceeded to the hatchway.
“I don’t know what your experience with other species is,” the young diplomat said, “but we have some in this group that are a bit exotic by human standards.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Carter said as he undogged the hatch.
The diplomats were housed near the Chuck Yeager’s center of mass, where it was easiest to maintain gravity. Each had quarters suitable to its environmental needs, but most came from planets with atmospheres and gravities not far off Earth normal. When humans first mastered interstellar travel, they were surprised by two things: the diversity of the sentient life-forms they encountered and the similarities in the planets that supported them. There were a number of theories about why this was, the dominant one being that the universe has a wicked sense of humor.
The Chuck Yeager wasn’t a cruise ship, so the individual quarters were small. But there was one fairly large common area, and when the two humans stepped through the second hatchway door, that’s where they found themselves. It was empty.
“Who cut the cheese?” Carter asked.
“Excuse me?” Gordon asked.
“It’s a piece of old Earth slang,” Carter said. “Old Earth studies are a hobby of mine. I was referring to the smell.”
The young diplomat tapped his nose. “I’m wearing filters. But I think one of these creatures is a flier that uses methane emissions to help keep itself aloft.”
The ship’s officer rubbed his upper lip vigorously.
“Methane emissions,” he said. “You mean the thing…”
His sentence was cut short by the arrival of an Xtee. It shot out of the entrance to a hallway at about five feet off the deck, banked sharply, and headed for the two humans. It had a vaguely human face, a long, sharp beak, and four stubby appendages on each side of its body, all of which were flapping furiously. It looked like a cross between a Leprechaun and a penguin.
As it sank toward the deck, the creature emitted a loud noise from its rear. It immediately regained height and speed.
“Ah, Saddam Hussein,” Carter said, “it’s a Gaspasser.”
The creature shot toward the two humans. Gordon couldn’t tell if it was under control, but decided to take no chances. He hit the deck. The Gaspasser flew over, headed directly for the ship’s officer.
“Screw diplomacy,” Carter said, and walloped the flying creature with a power arm. The Gaspasser tumbled beak over butt, righted itself, wobbled on, hit the far wall, and fell to the deck, where it lay with its stubby appendages still flapping feebly.
“Adolf Hitler, Carter,” Gordon said. “What if you’ve killed it? Don’t you think one dead Xtee diplomat on my record is enough?”
“Don’t worry about it,” the ship’s officer said, “I’ve run into things like this before. They usually aren’t that easy to hurt.”
He strode over to where the Gaspasser lay, picked it up, and lofted it into the air. The beat of its wings picked up, it emitted an even louder noise from its rear, and shot off toward the hallway from which it had come.
“Whew!” Carter said. “Imagine what the atmosphere on that thing’s home planet is like. You haven’t got an extra pair of nose filters, do you?”
The young diplomat shook his head.
“How did you encounter an Xtee on this tub?” he asked.
“Oh, I get around,” Carter said vaguely. “Where are the Huskers, anyway?”
Gordon decided not to push it. “They’re down here,” he said.
The two humans walked through the common area and down the hallway, which ran in a circle around the ship. They passed a series of compartments, each with a hatchway. Some were open, some shut. The closed hatches had small windows in them. Carter and Gordon stopped to look into each compartment.