shadow—
He spun around to face Roman; and in the captain’s face he could see that they’d both caught it at the same time. Roman got to the intercom first. “Rrin-saa? This is the captain. Why aren’t we moving?”
Ferrol keyed himself into the circuit, and for a long moment the display remained blank. Then, abruptly, it cleared to show a contact-helmeted Tampy wearing a green/purple neckerchief. “Rro-maa, yes,” he grated.
“Hhom-jee, why aren’t we moving?” Roman demanded again. “Ensign MacKaig sent you the direction several minutes ago.”
“Pegasunninni will not move.”
Roman swore under his breath. “Hhom-jee, we have got to get in there. Is Pegasus worried about getting closer to the hot star?—if so, we may be able to shield it from—”
“Pegasunninni is not worried about star,” Hhom-jee said. “He will not move. Any direction. He does not seem to be well.”
Roman looked up at Ferrol, his eyes abruptly tight… and Ferrol felt his stomach twist into a hard knot. Without Pegasus, Amity was trapped in this system.
With a star preparing itself to explode.
Chapter 9
It was odd, Roman thought distantly. Over the years he’d spent hours on end in cramped deep-space shuttlecraft and powered worksuits, all without the slightest hint of trouble. Now, with billions of cubic kilometers of open space around him, he was suddenly feeling the unpleasant stirrings of claustrophobia.
Trapped in a pre-nova system… “What do you mean, he’s not well?” he demanded.
“You mean he’s sick, or fatigued, or what?”
“I do not know,” was the all-too predictable reply. “I know that I have never seen a space horse like this; that is all.”
Roman gritted his teeth. “Where’s Sso-ngu? Let me talk to him.”
“He is resting.”
“Well, wake him up,” Ferrol growled.
“He cannot be disturbed,” Hhom-jee said.
Ferrol started to say something else, stopped as Roman threw him a warning look.
“I’m coming down there,” he told Hhom-jee. “Keep trying.”
He broke the connection and unstrapped. “Commander, light a small fire under Tenzing’s people,” he ordered over his shoulder as he launched himself toward the door. “I want their best guess as to what’s wrong with Pegasus, and some suggestions on how to cure it, by the time I get back.”
“Yes, sir,” Ferrol called after him.
The Tampy section looked the same as it had the first time Roman had gone there, but this time he hardly even noticed the alien beauty of it. Fingers searching out the handholds half-buried in the moss, he pulled himself along the corridors as quickly as he could.
He reached the Handler room door and pushed himself through the opening, to find three of the aliens waiting quietly there for him. Though to be more accurate, only Rrin-saa and Hhom-jee were actually waiting for him: floating alone over in a far corner, humming dreamily to himself, Sso-ngu wasn’t in any shape to be expecting Roman or anyone else.
“Rro-maa,” Rrin-saa said gravely as Roman found one of the few patches of velgrip the Tampies had allowed in their section and planted his feet onto it.
“Hhom-jee informed me you were coming.”
“Hhom-jee informed me that Pegasus was sick,” Roman returned, breathing heavily through his filter mask as he threw a glance at Hhom-jee. Beneath the amplifier helmet, the Handler’s eyes were turned upward, toward the viewport and Pegasus.
“We do not know if he is sick,” Rrin-saa said. “Perhaps he is simply disturbed by the changing light of the star and does not yet wish to move.”
“Well, why don’t we know?” Roman demanded. “Hhom-jee is in contact with it—why can’t he just ask it what’s wrong?”
Rrin-saa looked at Hhom-jee, back at Roman. “It is not like that, Rro-maa,” he said. “There are no questions or answers. There merely is.”
Roman took a deep breath, forced down the sudden rush of anger. “This isn’t the time or place for philosophic discussions, Rrin-saa,” he told the Tampy. “There are fifty humans on that planet who are going to be vaporized if we can’t get Pegasus moving again. Not to mention everyone aboard Amity.”
Rrin-saa looked at him, an odd intensity in his lopsided face. “We share your feelings, Rro-maa. The Tamplissta also have an observery on that world.”
Roman felt his eyebrows lifting. There wasn’t any particular reason, of course, why there shouldn’t be Tampies down there—Shadrach was large enough to accomodate all the research teams anyone could want. But it felt somehow out of character for them to be interested in a non-living part of nature. “Why didn’t you say something about this earlier?” he asked.
Rrin-saa touched fingers to ear: the Tampy shrug. “I was not asked.”
Roman pursed his lips. “All the more reason for us not to hang around out here.”
He nodded toward the humming Sso-ngu. “And if Hhom-jee can’t get Pegasus to move, perhaps Sso-ngu can.”
Rrin-saa looked at Hhom-jee, at Sso-ngu, back at Roman. “I do not think so. He will not wish to use compulsion; and I do not think compulsion will be effective, regardless.”
“Try it anyway.”
Rrin-saa looked again at Sso-ngu. “He is resting now and cannot be disturbed.”
Roman bit down hard on the inside of his cheek, forcing his mind to remain calm.
“Rrin-saa… I understand that these rest periods are as important to you as sleep is to us. But we’re in a crisis situation here; and I know full well that waking him up won’t harm him. So wake him up.”
“It will not be good for him,” Rrin-saa insisted. “And there is no need. If Hhom-jee cannot move Pegasunninni, then Sso-ngu will not be able to do so.”
For a long moment Roman was sorely tempted to go over there and personally shake Sso-ngu awake. But there was a principle at stake here; a principle, and a reminder of why they were all on Amity in the first place. “Rrin-saa. When we began this voyage you acknowledged that I was in command of Amity, that for the sake of this experiment you and the others would agree to follow my leadership. I accept your assessment that Sso-ngu‘s chances are probably very slim; but we humans thrive on slim odds—and when we win them it’s precisely because we don’t give up until we’re forced to.” He nodded toward Sso-ngu. “We haven’t hit that point; not yet. Consider it a lesson in human thought patterns, or even just a lesson in human stubbornness, whichever you’d prefer.
“But also consider it an order.”
For a handful of heartbeats Rrin-saa remained silent and motionless. Then, slowly, he floated over to Sso-ngu and touched him on the arm, speaking softly in the highpitched Tampy language. The humming stopped; Sso-ngu shook himself like a wet terrier and rubbed his neck. Rrin-saa said something else. Sso-ngu gazed at Roman for a moment, then went to where Hhom-jee floated, relieving him of the helmet.
“He will try now,” Rrin-saa said. There was no trace of any emotion in his voice that Roman could detect.
For a few minutes the room was silent. Then Sso-ngu turned from the viewport.
“Pegasunninni will not move,” he said. The words were clear and flat, with no room for argument.
It had still been worth a try. “Keep trying,” Roman told Sso-ngu. Kicking himself over to the repeater instrument panel, he found the intercom and keyed for the bridge. “Commander? Anything from the survey section?”
“Nothing of any use,” Ferrol said grimly. “They’ve come up with four or five theories, everything from radiation sickness to malnutrition, and not a shred of real evidence to support any of them. A cure is completely out of the question, of course.”
That, too, had been worth a try… and it left Amity with just exactly one option left.
“All right, then, I guess it’s time for some serious improvisation,” he told Ferrol.
“Call engineering and have Stolt start running the fusion drive back up to power.
Then tell Tenzing that he’s to collect the equipment he’ll need to continue analyzing Pegasus’ condition and get it to the lander.”