"Nothing," Carialle said. "Perhaps Gavon is coming all the way in without speaking to us again."
"Nasty," Keff said. He reached for a towel and wiped his face. "I thought this would be amicable. Maybe I won't give him all my files. Let him figure out the subtleties between this and this." He made a couple of signs that Carialle, searching the IT database, found to be the symbols for hunger and a mild obscenity regarding mouths and filth. Long Hand looked shocked, Small Spot abashed. Tall Eyebrow and the two Cridi natives grinned widely.
"Wait!" Carialle exclaimed, getting a tickle from her long-distance receiver. "Here's something at last!"
The data-thread was weak and badly garbled. Carialle boosted it, and checked the frequency. It was the same Gavon had been sending on, but the audio portion was mostly static.
"… day… Intruders… May-"
Keff sat up. "Carialle, that sounds bad. Isn't there any more?"
"No."
"Play it again."
Now Carialle strained out a few more of the harmonics and static, and boosted the gain. The message welled up out of the speaker, then faded away again. "… ayDAY. INTRUDERS! MAYday… ip…" There was no more.
"Something's happened to them," she said. "In the sidebands I'm hearing the ID pulse from their black box, but no ship noise in the low registers, and no more audio messages."
"Intruders!" Keff exclaimed. "They were attacked! How many? Who? Who was it?"
He looked at the Cridi, who shook their heads, signing nervously between one another.
"We've got to help Gavon," Keff said. He shouldered back into his tunic, immediately all business. "Our fellow ship is in trouble. They might need life support assistance." He dared not think of the worst reason the DSC-902 had stopped sending, but concentrated on the possibility of saving the crew.
"I'm starting launch prep now," Carialle snapped out. She activated the control board, and quickly counted green lights. "Tall Eyebrow, Narrow Leg, you'll all have to go. Big Eyes, will you please tell Space Command we request permission to lift. We have an emergency on our hands."
"I will," the young councillor signed, then became still as she squeaked out vocal information through her finger-control transmitters. Carialle heard her voice repeated on first one, then a dozen personal frequencies as the message went out to the command center and members of the conclave via the Core of Cridi.
"I will come with you," Tall Eyebrow said, turning to look from Keff to Carialle's frog image.
Keff shook his head. "Stay here. We could get caught by whatever happened to them, too," he said. "I won't risk you getting hurt. We'll come back as soon as we can."
"I will go now," the Frog Prince insisted. "You may need me." He turned to sign at the local Cridi.
"How long?" Narrow Leg asked Keff. "How long until you go?"
Keff glanced at the board. "Minutes."
"Wait. Give me ten." The old Cridi levitated and flew out of the airlock. He began his high-pitched warbling, too. Big Eyes glanced up, surprised, then followed her father.
They were back within the promised ten minutes, but not alone. Behind them sailed a large crew of Cridi workers, bearing with them tools and a round device the size of a medicine ball, and an impressive tangle of flex, tubes, boxes, and clamps.
Keff peered at it. "It's a ship's Core. But we can't use it, sir." He waggled his fingers loosely.
"I can," Tall Eyebrow said, holding up his hand, on which the new finger-stalls gleamed. "Let me help. You have done so much for me and my people. You may need more than you have."
"Let him come," Carialle said, interrupting her preparations. "Our tractors may not be equal to what we might find out there-and we're unarmed."
Keff's face blanked with shock. "Your salvagers? You think that's who's out there?"
"It's a possibility. There've been several other 'disappearances.' No space anomalies, Simeon said," Carialle pointed out. "We're in this sector. I feel there's a connection to my personal disaster. It's just a guess, Keff. I have no positive data. I couldn't sell it as a certainty."
"I trust your guesses more than other people's certainty," Keff said. "I've known you these sixteen years."
The miniature Core was installed by Narrow Leg's crew with remarkable speed and efficiency. Carialle felt its power signature, and set up a program so it wouldn't feed back on her own systems. It responded well to the technician who tested it, putting in his own frequency number, and to Tall Eyebrow, whose new circuitry was tied in as well.
"Its range is 18,000 kilometers," the shipbuilder said, with equal references to the X, Y, and Z axes. "Enough for a planet plus layers of atmosphere plus error factor."
"That means getting in right on top of the DSC-902," Carialle said. "We'd better not miss. I'm calculating their possible location based on the time signature for their last transmission. I must work from that assumption."
Keff felt stricken, but he nodded.
Big Eyes waved for attention. "You have permission to lift when you wish." She looked at Tall Eyebrow. "I go, too?"
"No," Keff and Tall Eyebrow signed at once. "You could be in danger."
"We don't know what's out there," Carialle snapped out. "No more arguments. Will you all clear the decks? Keff, TE, secure to station."
"Go in peace and safety," Narrow Leg said. "Return with honor." He turned to Carialle's pillar, as he had seen the others do. "We will assist your launch." The technicians backed away from the blank panel behind which they had secured the Core. They all flew out of the airlock as Carialle shut it on their heels.
"Come back," Big Eyes signed simply to Tall Eyebrow. Then, she was gone.
"Damn M-C," Carialle growled as she lit engines. Flames gathered under her exhaust cones, between the landing fins, wreathing her in light. All her indicators read green and on go. "This wouldn't have happened at all if he hadn't decided I was about to go rogue. He should have believed me! There's something out there, and it's hostile."
Outside, she observed shadows of Cridi behind the windows of the low buildings at the edge of the field. Farther back, in a great ring around the field, frogs stood, or levitated, or hovered in their saucer-craft, waiting and watching. The infinity of audio broadcast frequencies, both private and public, filled with chatter and speculation, hoping for the first successful launch from their planet in half a Standard century.
"Here goes." She applied thrusters. Carialle felt the invisible hands holding her down to the surface of the planet drop away, and gather at the foot of her ship.
"Ready," Keff said. Tall Eyebrow cheeped an affirmative.
"Brace yourselves," she told the human and the amphibioid as she applied thrust. "Watch your necks."
"Necks?" Keff asked. "Wh-yyyyyyyyy?!"
His question became a strained cry as the g-force pushed his head back. Within a half second of putting on her own engines, Carialle felt the envelope rising under her skirts. It felt like everyone on Cridi was helping to push her into space. The force shoved her hard into the sky like an extra booster rocket, bringing her to breakaway speed in record time. Flames from sheer friction danced down her sides as she cut through the atmosphere and emerged into space, yet her internal temperature remained stable. The Cores, both inside and outside the craft, were protecting her. She felt the exosphere seal behind her, planetary ozone readings returning to normal within milliseconds of her passage. The additional thrust cannoned her forward. She was moving 60% faster than she could have gone unassisted. The shields strained against the additional pressure but were fully capable of holding. She lit her own full engines, corrected course, and opened all her receivers, hoping for word from Gavon's ship. A quick slingshot around Cridi, and she was on her way.