“On loan only,” Ferrol told him. “Listen closely, now. Our ETA is—” he scanned the helm display for the numbers—“about forty-five minutes. I want the cargo bay cleared—and I mean cleared—and one lifeboat prepped and stocked for a flight planetside. Also, dig a pair of mid-length rein lines out of storage—four hundred meters ought to do it—and get them attached to the forward grapple. Attached good.”
There was a short pause. “Sounds like we’re not going to be going hunting, after all,” Demarco said.
“Oh, we’re going hunting, all right,” Ferrol told him grimly. “Count on that. Now.
Here’s the plan: we’re going to put the lander here into the cargo bay, with the rein lines hanging out the main hatchway. We’ll pack the gap to make the bay airtight; but since any real tug on the lines would tear out the sealant, we’ll run your set of reins between our space horse and the forward grapple to do the actual pulling, leaving the one from the lander slack. Clear?”
“Except for whether or not that lander will actually fit in our cargo bay,” Demarco said. “Our rangefinder readout on you makes it pretty damn close.”
“It’s close, but it’ll work,” Ferrol assured him. “I’ve run the numbers twice, and it can be done.”
“Well… if you say so,” Demarco said, still sounding unconvinced.
‘Trust me,“ Ferrol said. ”Anyway, that’s my problem. You just concentrate on making sure I’ve got room to get the thing in. That, and getting the rein lines hooked up. Oh, and you’d better run a cable from the bay intercom box so that we can link up to the lander’s outside comm port.” A stab of momentary guilt twinged at him; but without enough filter masks for the Scapa Flow’s entire crew, they really had no choice but to confine the Tampies to the lander and cargo bay.
“Got it. I presume we’re rather in a hurry?”
Ferrol threw a sideways glance at Yamoto’s profile. “There’s enough time to do the job right,” he told Demarco. “That doesn’t mean you should stop for coffee, though.”
“Right. We’ll be ready when you get here.”
“Good. Ferrol out.”
He keyed off the laser and set the scanners for a full radar and beacon search.
Unlikely there would be any other ships in the vicinity, but there wasn’t any point in taking chances.
“You going to do the docking yourself?” Yamoto asked.
Ferrol nodded. “I’d planned to, yes. Why?”
“Because I don’t think you can do it,” she said bluntly. “Not without wrecking either the lander or your cargo bay or both.”
Ferrol had wondered about that himself. “I’ll take it real slow,” he told her. “Or else have the Scopa Flow’s chief helmer come out and take us in.”
“With the Amity breathing down your neck?” she asked pointedly.
“Who said the Amity was breathing down my neck?” Ferrol countered.
She turned contemptuous eyes on him. “Oh, come on, Ferrol, let’s cut through the snow,” she said. “Whatever you’re doing here, you’re doing it on your own, without a scrap of authorization from anyone. We both know it; and we both know that if you take the time to EVA a helmer out here, you’ll be crowding your timetable so much he’s likely to rush the job.”
“I can’t let you do the docking,” Ferrol told her quietly. “So far everything you’ve done comes under the heading of innocently obeying orders from a superior officer.
I don’t want you in any deeper than that.”
“Your concern is touching,” Yamoto growled. “But soothe your conscience—I’m not doing it for you.” She jerked her head back toward the Tampies. “You’ve got three innocents at risk here—four, if you count me. I’m doing the docking, and that’s final.”
Behind the filter mask, Ferrol grimaced, glad the expression wasn’t visible. Of course; it had to have been something like that. Not simply that she was willing to trust him or his judgment.
But then, no one seemed willing to trust his judgment these days. Why should Yamoto be different?
“In that case,” he told her, “I accept.”
“Sure as hell taking her time pulling away,” Demarco growled, gazing at his displays. “You know, I don’t think she’s planning to head planetside at all.”
Ferrol glanced at the screen. Demarco was right: Yamoto was just letting her lifeboat drift. “Probably decided she’d do as well to wait for the Amity to show up,” he told Demarco. “Probably also figures that if she can record our Jump direction it’ll give them a shot at tracking us down.”
Demarco sent him a frown. “They can’t do that, can they?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Ferrol advised him. “With the route we’ll be taking they won’t have a hope in hell of following us.”
On his console the intercom pinged. “Chayne, we’ve got the intercom connection to the lander now,” someone reported.
“Thank you.” Ferrol keyed the proper switch. “Wwis-khaa? This is Commander Ferrol. Are you and the others doing all right?”
“We are well, Ffe-rho.”
With Ferrol and Yamoto gone from the lander, the three aliens had removed their filter masks; briefly, Ferrol wished he was better at reading Tampy expressions.
“I’m sorry we have to keep you back there in the lander,” he apologized. “But without enough filter masks to go around we really can’t let you into the main part of the ship.”
“No scitte,” Demarco muttered under his breath. “It’d lake months to scrub the stench out of the air system.”
Ferrol threw him a glare. “You should have received the next target star on your display by now,” he continued to Wwis-khaa. “Can Epilog see it all right?”
“He can.” Wwis-khaa paused. “Ffe-rho, I would like to know what it is you are asking us to do.”
“A fair question,” Ferrol agreed. “Very simply, I’m asking you to help your people.
Your people, and your space horses. Have you ever heard of an Earth creature called the dog?”
“A domesticated carnivore of the Canis group,” Wwis-khaa said promptly. “Its ecological position is usually as a companion or pet to humans.”
“Right,” Ferrol nodded, vaguely impressed that the alien would know that.
“They’re mostly pets now, but originally they were used by herders and shepherds to help guard food animals from dangerous predators. Still are, in some places.”
He’d expected Wwis-khaa to catch his drift; and he wasn’t disappointed. “You seek to find such creatures in space?” the Tampy asked, his head tilting to one side in a gesture Ferrol had never seen before. “Small predators to protect our space horses from sharks?”
“That’s it,” Ferrol nodded. “Granted, we don’t know if such things even exist; but now that we know there are at least three species of space-going creatures, it seems reasonable that there should be others. True?”
“I do not know,” Wwis-khaa said. “How do you presume to search for such creatures throughout the vastness of space?”
“I don’t,” Ferrol said. “We’re going to leave space and normal star systems alone and concentrate instead on a much more select group of places: namely, the accretion disks around large black holes.”
Demarco twisted his head around, a stunned look on his face. “I think it makes sense,” Ferrol continued, ignoring the other. “That’s where space horses are supposed to have originated; and if so, there must be some remnant of the ecology left. You game to take a look?”
For a long moment Wwis-khaa was silent. Ferrol held his breath, fully and painfully aware that if the Tampies refused the whole thing would die right here and now. “Your wishes are ours,” the alien said. “When do you wish to leave?”
Quietly, Ferrol exhaled. “As soon as Epilog is in position,” he told the other. “Let the helmer—Randall—know when you’re ready.”
“Your wishes are ours,” Wwis-khaa repeated.
Feeling a little limp, Ferrol switched off the intercom. It had worked… and they were on their way. He looked up—
To find Demarco gazing hard at him. “I trust,” the other said carefully, “that all of that was just so much spun sugar.”
“Some of it was,” Ferrol said. “Most of it wasn’t. We are going to poke around a few black holes, and we are hunting for a scaled-down version of a shark. But not for the reason I gave Wwis-khaa—that was just to get his cooperation.”