"Aren't you going to raise it enough for me?" he asked through his helmet mike.
"Too thick stiff," Tall Eyebrow's voice said in Standard over Keff's helmet radio, with polite regret.
Shrugging, Keff dropped to his knees, and crawled under the lip. As soon as he was through, the bumper thudded down. Surrounded by round obstructions that caromed into his knees, Keff rose to his feet and used his suit light to find the controls. He hit the framed bar. The great door rose. The Cridi scooted through in a party, with the brawn striding along behind. Keff waited, holding his breath, until the second curtain lifted. Before them, the tube extended out toward a distant light. What illumination there was ran in faint parallel lines along the ceiling. Keff listened, heard nothing, then let himself exhale.
"It feels like I'm in a suspense drama," he told Carialle.
"Think of it as another M amp;L game," she said. "I read no live bodies in the ship. Unless they're capable of telekinesis like the Cridi, they can't trigger any traps on you. Go slow, and I'll look for peculiar chemical or heat traces. Aim the video pickup toward anything suspicious."
The Cridi abandoned any attempt to paddle their globes up the flexible walkway, and levitated a meter above the floor. Big Voice jockeyed his way into point position.
"I shall be the first to go in," he signed, with a self-important cheep over his shoulder at Keff.
"All right," Keff said, with Carialle's reassurance in mind. He caught Big Voice's eye, and signed. "You're an observant man, er, frog. You look out for danger."
The pompous councillor's eyes widened, and he shot back to the group.
"Danger is for humans to detect," he said emphatically. Keff bowed, concealing the grin that poked out both sides of his mouth.
The tube swayed with every step Keff took. The jerking movement made him cough, and he remembered how it felt to take that deep breath of alien atmosphere. Nervously, he checked the right side of his helmet seal every so often to make certain it remained closed.
A clear panel protected the same kind of two-bar control on the spaceship's side. As Keff raised his hand to it, the panel slid away. He punched the top button and waited. Obediently, the hatch slid upward, revealing a plain, square airlock. Keff gasped in recognition.
"This ship is definitely salvage," he said. "I know where the model came from. It's human-made, and half a century old." He felt along the wall with a gloved hand, looking for the small screwplate that should have been just inside the hatchway, but his fingertips found only a couple of small holes where the rivets had been pried out.
"They must have constructed the whole ship part by part," Carialle said, critically. "The controls appear to be retrofitted, but this airlock came off a much larger vessel."
"Appropriate, since they're larger beings," Keff said. Once he and the Cridi were inside, he looked around, turning his body so Carialle could see everything. The airlock closed, pressurized, and released the group into the main cabin of the ship. Keff showed the camera eye the shabby walls, the meager assortment of furniture.
"They haven't redecorated recently," Carialle said.
"No doubt about it, though," Keff said. "They've been shopping at Central Worlds carryout. We're on to something that the CenCom will want to know all about."
The inside of the ship was spartan. Everything was intended for function, with no concession to aesthetics. The slings and benches in the main cabin were worn, and the impact webbing attached to them sported patches in many places. Wall panels, cobbled together from a dozen ships, showed cracks and crazing where the enamel wasn't simply chipped away. Everything Keff saw was old. Even the mismatched floor panels showed worn and dented surfaces. The Cridi emitted small cheeps of interest. Keff let out a low whistle.
"What a lot of junk," he said. "Where's the up-to-date machinery as we saw in the domes?"
"Status?" Carialle guessed. "This ship might be far down the pecking order and gets what's left after the seniors take their pick. Or merely lack of opportunity. Pirates can't maraud through the rich part of space without people noticing, and we'd know if anyone reported rapacious griffins."
"Ours is so much nicer," Narrow Leg signed, with pride, gesturing around at the ship. "This lacks continuity. Could not be safe."
"He's right," Carialle said. "I don't know how this thing flies without blowing up. It was leaking high-rad like the proverbial sieve while it was chasing me."
"How quiet it is in here," Keff said, glancing around. The Cridi huddled in a corner, signing to one another. No sound except the burbling and occasional mechanical crunching of machinery broke the silence. "I'd better make sure the griffins didn't leave us any armed surprises."
Two broad doors were set into the walls, one in the wall to Keff's left, leading forward, and the other directly opposite. He signed to the others to wait, and went to the aft door. It opened onto a corridor, narrow only by griffin standards. Tall Eyebrow signed a quick question at him. Keff shook his head.
"I want to take a look before I let anyone else roam around," he said. "It might be dangerous." The Cridi signalled assent, and stayed close together near the airlock.
The rear section was divided into cargo and sleeping quarters. The bunkroom-for it was clearly that-contained more of the divan pillows, plus a few small possessions enclosed in nets on hooks on the walls. Loops of webbing attached to the hull sported frayed fibers.
"Looks like the artificial gravity goes out all the time," Keff commented to Carialle. He fingered one of the bundles, identifying a scarf, some ornamental jewelery, and a soft, fuzzy object that he guessed was a child's toy, almost worn out with love.
"Homey, isn't it?" Carialle said tinnily in his ear. "You'd never guess that these were bloodthirsty pirates, who murder and rob with such efficiency. It took them only hours to strip the DSC-902." Keff shuddered and backed away. Suddenly, the small bundle seemed macabre to him.
The sanitation room bore no resemblance to the one that had been yanked from a CW cargo liner. The facilities were altered to accomodate griffin parts, and the shower had once been two units, welded together. To Keff's surprise, the chamber was spotless. Even the corners had been scrubbed out ruthlessly. He pointed to a residue filling one of the cracks in the enamel.
"Soap," Carialle said, after a moment's analysis. "Or as near as makes never-mind."
"It's all so old," Keff said. "It still strikes me a trifle pathetic."
He went through to the cargo bay. It was full of straps and mounts hanging at all angles from the bulkheads. Keff recognized the configuration. It was used for securing odd-shaped and delicate cargo. He felt naked shock when he saw that some of the artifacts bound into the shockfoam cradles were of recent CW manufacture. He recognized life support equipment, booster engine parts, even coils upon coils of communication cable. One of the containers lashed into place bore the logo of the DSC-902. Something inside him twisted into a solid knot.
"Pathetic?" Carialle said.
"You're right," Keff said, fighting words past the lump. He was angry, and surprised at the intensity of the emotion. "They're not worth my sympathy. I have work to do."
He searched through the cargo area, yanking open bulkhead cabinets, then went back to the dormitory, and poked through every bundle, every drawer and niche. At last, he tried turning over the bed pillows. His gloves slipped on the furry surface, but he seized a fold of the cloth, and wrenched upward. They were remarkably heavy, and he found himself sitting on the floor next to the third one, panting.