Teri asked, “While you do what?”
“While I grow another ship, and make a Bose transition with it.”
“Forget that.” Torran tried to stand up, but there was not enough space at the table to permit it. “We were trained as survival team members. You just told us that we were the best of the group. Arabella Lund as much as said the same thing. If you go, we go. What are your qualifications in survival training?”
“Very limited. I could say that I have survived a large number of dangerous situations, but most of those could have been pure luck. However, that is irrelevant. Do you—both of you—wish to make the Bose transition with me?”
In unison, “We do.” Torran added, “Damn right we do. If you like we’ll go without you—we were trained in survival techniques. But no way are you going without us.”
“Then there are numerous preparations to be made. A new ship must be grown. Since the Pride of Orion will be without a crew, it must be left in a suitable condition to receive and relay all messages arriving from others. I must also send word of our proposed actions to Professor Lang’s group, and to E.C. Tally. If you will excuse me . . . ”
Graves hurried out. Torran Veck, pushing hard, moved the table far enough for him to move from behind it and stand up. He said, “A bit eager to leave us, don’t you think? You know what that means?”
“I have a good idea.”
“Graves had all his information days ago, before E.C. Tally left. He has been sitting on it, waiting.”
“Right.” Teri, penned in by Torran, was at last free to move from her seat. “Waiting until we went stir crazy and came looking for him. He knew that by now we would be so keen to see action, we would go along with whatever he suggested.”
“So we were manipulated.” Torran shook his head. “By a master. He’s damn good at it. Maybe that’s what it takes to be an Ethical Councilor—patience and cunning. I hope there’s more to it than that.”
“We could always back out.” They stared at each other, until Teri laughed. “No way, right? Better death than terminal boredom. But we have only seventy-two percent odds in our favor. That means there’s a twenty-eight percent chance that we’ll make a Bose jump, and end up God-knows-where, or nowhere at all. What then?”
“Then?” Torran draped his massive arm over Teri’s shoulder. “Why, then we find out how good as survival specialists we really are. Come on, Teri. If we’re going to kill ourselves, I’d rather get it over with sooner than later.”
The No Regrets, created from the shrinking body of the Pride of Orion and newly named by Teri Dahl, stood at the very edge of the Bose node. Torran Veck was checking the final matching of entry velocity.
“As good as it gets,” he said. “If the exit sequence is wrong, a few millimeters a second won’t make any difference at all. We’ll be in limbo. Whenever you are ready.”
Julian Graves was at an observation window. He was staring not at the nearby pearly radiance of the Bose node, but far off to where Iceworld, invisible to all sensors, orbited its dark primary.
“I wish we could have had word from Professor Lang before we left,” he said. “We have received nothing—not even their signal beacon.”
“Whenever you are ready.”
“I heard you.” Graves sighed. “Go ahead. After three days of silence, another minute is unlikely to make a difference. And the Pride of Orion will continue to wait for signals, from us or the others, for as long as needed.”
Torran Veck guided the No Regrets forward into the Bose node. Behind them, the parent ship began its lonely vigil. The power supply was enough to allow it to monitor events for a million years. Even so, Julian Graves was wrong when he said that the ship would wait for their signals for as long as needed. Neither Graves nor the ship’s computer knew it, but all members of the Pride of Orion’s crew, human and alien, had departed this stellar system and would never return.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Pleasureworld
Until he ran into Sinara Bellstock on his way into the Pride of Orion, Louis Nenda had never met anyone who called herself a “survival specialist.” Didn’t everybody do their best to survive? Consider the alternative.
Louis listened, at first with interest and then with horror, as Sinara explained.
“Martial arts, of course. We have experience in every known form of weapon. I received the maximum possible class grade for the use of projectile devices. Our work was done in every environment you can imagine—free-fall, high gravity, low gravity, dense atmosphere, poisonous atmosphere, hard vacuum, and intense radiation fields. I trained on frozen ice caps of water and solid nitrogen, and deep in oceans of water and liquid methane.”
“Hold on a minute. Are you saying you were taken to planets with all of these?”
“Not exactly. We operated in simulated setups. I mean, our budget was generous, but there were limits. It was all right, though, the training facility on Persephone can mimic any place you care to mention.”
There were places Nenda didn’t care to mention or ever think about again. He asked, “What about aliens? Were you trained to deal with aliens?”
“Naturally. We expected that we would have to work with any clade, in any part of the spiral arm. I mean our own spiral arm, of course—no one ever thought we would be sent to the Sag Arm. But we are ready for anything. Did I mention that I had long sessions in unarmed combat?” Sinara gave Louis an enigmatic smile. “Those were with humans as well as aliens. If you would like to test me out, maybe you and I could try a tussle—sometime when we have more privacy.”
Was that what it sounded like? Nenda plowed on. “So, for instance, you could tackle somebody like At there?”
He gestured to Atvar H’sial. The Cecropian was sitting at the other side of the Have-It-All’s most comfortable cabin, silent but doing the pheromonal equivalent of glowering.
“Well, tackle is probably the right word.” Sinara eyed the hulking alien. “She’s huge, isn’t she? I never met one before, but I know from the simulations that a Cecropian is very strong. I’d do well to hold my own with her.”
“Right. Hold your own. And how about that lot?” Nenda’s jerk of the thumb included J’merlia, Kallik, and Archimedes, huddled together in a strange heap at the end of the cabin that led to the ship’s main galley.
“As I understand it, a Lo’tfian won’t fight, no matter what you do to him. We didn’t have training experience with a simulated Zardalu, because we were told that they had been extinct for thousands of years. I certainly never expected to meet one.” Sinara frowned, as though a suspicion that her training might have been less than complete had crossed her mind. “I was supposed to fight a Hymenopt, though. It seemed unfair, they’re so little and cuddly. I heard that the poor things used to be hunted for their fur. Is that true?”
“The Hymantel, you mean? It’s tough and water-resistant, and it insulates against heat and cold. Yes, people wanted to make clothes out of them, so they used to hunt Hymenopts. At least, they tried to. I never saw anybody wearing a Hymantel. But did you fight one?”
“Yes. I had to, it was part of the course.”
“And how did it go?”