"That's one," Carialle said. "Fifteen to go."
"You're letting them get away!" Keff cried. He was cornered between two of the foe, who stood tossing their weapons from hand to hand. One of them feinted, and Keff parried, sweating. Tall Eyebrow ran toward another elusive spark.
"I will assist!" cried Small Spot. He was the more impetuous of the two aides who had accompanied Tall Eyebrow from Ozran. Small Spot, in spite of his diminutive sounding name, was large, as the amphibioids went. The "spot" was a lighter greenish patch in the center of his forehead. Unlike most of his species, his hide had a smooth color all over but for that. He sprang up from where he had been sitting on Keff's weight bench to aid his prince. The fingers of one hand slid into the five long grooves of his power amulet, and he rose five meters in the air to capture a "firefly" that had slipped Tall Eyebrow's grasp.
He floated down from the ceiling, looking sheepishly at his empty palm. He glanced up at the others shyly.
"I forget, there is nothing there to touch."
His companion, Long Hand, an older and more cautious female, perched out of the way of the action on the console, emitting the high-pitched creaking that meant one of their species was laughing. Small Spot returned to his place, skinny knees bent to show embarrassment.
"I do not understand human games," he admitted, small face set in a self-deprecatory grimace. "It is one more cultural oddity to which we must adapt."
"Relax, Small Spot," Carialle said. She made the image of a globe-frog appear on the wall at their level, and addressed him in sign. "There's no disgrace in being fooled by a good illusion. One of my better ones, I must say."
"She… gets… better… all the time," Keff panted, dancing away from an enemy whose skill matched his own.
"I had not been observing properly," Small Spot said.
In shame, he flapped one of his big flat hands away from his face, not looking at her simulacrum. To distract him, Carialle showed him a different hologram, a piece of technological schematic she had adapted from her observation of the Core of Ozran, the gigantic power complex that supplied the amphibioids' amulets. The mechanism connected each user to the Core by means of high frequency transmission. For the journey to the globe-frogs' homeworld, Carialle had installed a similar but much smaller system to serve their needs while they were aboard. Their delicate skins needed to be kept moist. With the amulets they could maintain an electrostatic charge that clothed them with a film of water all over except the palms of their hands and the soles of their feet. It put a tremendous strain on her engines, but she and Keff felt it was necessary to allow them to have freedom of movement and so not everything on this ground-breaking trip would be strange. It was enough that they were the first of their kind to leave their planet for the first time in a thousand years. Carialle felt it was her duty to put the nervous amphibioids at their ease.
"Maybe you can help me," she said to Small Spot. "I felt another odd surge, another sonic feedback, when you used your amulet just now. If I've adjusted the receptors correctly you should be able to draw power from my engines without this much signal noise. I think the problem comes from here." A portion of the diagram enlarged, bulging out from the rest as if under a magnifying glass.
"Let me see," Small Spot signed, gesturing it closer, clearly grateful for the chance to save face. Long Hand bounded down from the console with leggy grace, and trotted over to help. In no time at all, the two were signing away energetically over the faulty circuit diagram. At the other end of the room, Keff and Tall Eyebrow had moved on to the next part of the game, where they had to figure out the mystery that the Mask of Mulhavey was concealing, in spite of other pretend perils that occasionally distracted them. Tall Eyebrow grinned as Carialle responded to his questions, showing some of the hidden map and key as he answered each one correctly. Though make-believe was an unfamiliar concept to his species, Tall Eyebrow was embracing it as if he'd been brought up to it. In fact, the small aliens had adapted with remarkable speed to space travel, too.
The amphibioids, whom Keff and Carialle had dubbed "globe-frogs," for their mode of transportation (clear plastic bubbles partly filled with water) and their resemblance to Earth amphibians, had a very flexible outlook indeed. To ascend as they had from a marginal, swamp-bound existence where computer technology and particle science were taught in theory on clay tablets for lack of equipment in the lonely dream that one day they'd be able to use their handed-down education, to an equal partnership with technically capable but theoretically ignorant humans was a certifiable miracle. To then bring their shared planet forward centuries in only two Standard years was a more than respectable achievement. A human autocracy had been replaced by a republic governed by representatives of both races, human and globe-frog. When conditions had improved to a point where Tall Eyebrow and his conclave decided that the combined society would prosper without constant supervision, they sent a message to the Central Worlds, and asked for transportation to their native planet, Cridi, particularly requesting the CK-963 as their escort.
The team had been called home with a message coded urgent. They were briefed and rebriefed and re-rebriefed as to what to say and how to behave to the homeworld amphibioids. Carialle knew they weren't Alien Outreach Department's favorite team. The upper brass considered them too odd, too idiosyncratic to be good representatives of humanity and the Central Worlds. Still, it had been the CK-963, and not a more traditional team, that had discovered and reinstated the globe-frogs, and it was the CK-963 who must convey the visiting party from Ozran to Cridi. Carialle preferred to call their peculiarity "imagination" rather than "idiosyncracy," but looking at it from the perspective of people who ate pureed mush of unreconstructed proteins and carbs for lunch lest they be troubled by form, color, and texture, she supposed she and Keff must be as strange as… well, another alien race.
Several departments of CW had carefully examined all the tapes Keff and Carialle had made, and they wanted the power control technology. The team had warned that a high level of telepathic ability was necessary to operate it, and that unlimited use was destructive to the environment, but all the brass could see was effortless, remote manipulation of solid objects. Credit balances of high digits followed by endless zeroes danced before their eyes. Whatever obstacles needed to be overcome would be examined after the power control system was in their hands. Surely the Central Worlds had much they could offer in exchange. Carialle and Keff were to bend over backward and whistle if that was what was needed to ensure diplomatic ties with this fully mature, space-ready race of intelligent beings. Nothing must come between humanity and the Cridi, and the Cridi's wonderful scientific advances. The diplomatic arm warned the team to behave themselves, and put dozens of strictures upon them, punishable by fines and penalties too horrible to name. The brass weren't going to be best pleased that the "Odd Couple" had polluted the minds of the visiting party of frogs, teaching them their fantasy game to while away the long voyages. The slack cut for the CK-963 because of their big discovery would only go so far. Silly folderol would not be tolerated.
Carialle didn't care, and she knew Keff didn't, either. All they wanted was the opportunity to revisit Ozran, and they got it. They had been amazed at the difference after only a two-year absence. The almost-desert world of Ozran had become lush. Verdant cropland burgeoned, thousands of young trees sprouted, and the skies rained, rained, rained. Keff had found it dreary, but all Ozrans, shades of green and brown alike, stared up at the gray thunderclouds with expressions of bliss. It all depended upon your outlook, Carialle thought.