The asteroid was large and craggy, its edges sheathed in a pale and ghostly blue light from the distant black hole. A spot of white from the Scapa Flow’s searchlight swept slowly over it, lingering on a handful of shadows before moving on. Staring at the display, Ferrol shook his head. “Okay, I give up,” he said to no one in particular. “Where did the damn thing go?”
“To the left, I think,” Demarco said. “Over there by the—there it goes!”
A black shadow had detached itself from the asteroid and was skittering off through space, reaching the edge of the display before the tracking system caught up and centered it again. Roughly half a meter across, with a tendency to make right-angle turns in mid-course, it had early on been dubbed a butterfly… and in Ferrol’s opinion they’d learned just about all that twenty minutes of passive observation could teach them about it. “Let’s bring it in, Mai,” he said. “Whenever you’ve got a clear shot.”
“Right.” Demarco hissed gently between his teeth. “Here goes…”
The Scapa Flow jerked slightly as the net shot out. Ferrol held his breath… and at the last instant the butterfly swerved into a hairpin curve. Too late; the net swept around it and tightened—
In the pale blue light the brief flicker of coronal discharge from the net was clearly visible. The butterfly gave one last spasmodic twitch and went limp. “Townne: we’ve got it,” Ferrol called into his intercom. “Reel it in.”
“Right.”
On the display the netted butterfly began moving back toward the ship. Ferrol arched his shoulders, stretching muscles stiff with tension, and listened to the growing sense of bitter emptiness rumbling through his stomach. In four hours of drifting through the accretion disk they’d spotted, identified, and filmed no fewer than fifteen different variants of space-going creatures. Four—five, now—had been netted, electrically stunned or killed, and brought aboard for further study.
And in that whole damn menagerie, they hadn’t found a single solitary predator.
“Ffe-rho?”
With an effort, Ferrol shook the self-pity from his mind. “Yes, Wwis-khaa, what is it?”
“Is it your wish that we continue inward toward the black hole?”
Ferrol took a moment to check the external status readouts. He’d kept the ship moving with the general circular flow of the accretion disk since their arrival, moving only a few hundred kilometers further inward during that time. “Unless there’s a problem, yes,” he told Wwis-khaa. “Is the odd gravity bothering Epilog?”
“I do not know,” the Tampy said. “I know that it is a troublesome place for him; that is all.”
And a troubled space horse meant troubled and exhausted Handlers. A flash of anger flared up in the middle of Ferrol’s frustration, but he clamped his teeth against it. There was no point in snapping the Tampies’ heads off over this; for all their vaunted efficiency in hauling ships around, it was becoming painfully clear that space horses simply weren’t up to operating under prolonged stress. “Can you estimate how long it’ll be before we need to leave?” he asked Wwis-khaa. “Taking into account your own fatigue and that of the other Handlers?”
“I do not know,” the other said. “I know only that I will be able to Handle Epilonninni for two more hours, and that Bbri-hwoo will not be able to take my place then; that is all.”
Two hours… and they’d barely even scratched the surface of this system’s potential. “Understood,” he told the Tampy, a sour taste in his mouth. “All right, let’s try this: as soon as Ppla-zu takes over for you, we’ll find a nearby system to Jump to. Perhaps after you’ve all had a few days’ rest we’ll be able to come back.”
“Perhaps. I do not know.”
Ferrol looked up at Demarco. “Well,” he said. “Looks like this is—”
“Ffe-rho?”
Ferrol looked back at the intercom. “Yes, Wwis-khaa, what is it now?”
“Epilonninni is… troubled.” The alien eyes stared unblinking at Ferrol.
“Something that troubles him is near.”
Ferrol’s mouth went suddenly dry. “Kohlhase? What have you got?”
“No motion anywhere near Epilog’s bow,” the other said promptly.
“Keep watching,” Ferrol ordered. “Mai, Randall; I want a full scan of—”
“Motion!” Demarco cut in. “Bearing thirty-five degrees starboard, three zenith; range, eleven hundred meters.”
“I’m on it,” Ferrol gritted. His display locked and tracked; with fingers that were suddenly trembling he keyed for computer identification. The fifteen different species they’d listed ran past the image…
“It’s a new one,” Demarco confirmed. “Bigger than the others, too—almost four meters across.”
A sidebar of Ferrol’s display froze an image of the creature, scrubbed it… “Looks a little like a miniature vulture,” he muttered, a shiver running up his back.
Demarco glanced over his shoulder. “Is that good or bad?”
Ferrol chewed at the back of his lower lip. The rest of the scan was still showing negative… “As long as there’s just one of them it should be safe enough.”
Demarco grunted. “Not your predator, then, I take it?”
Carefully, Ferrol forced down the momentary rush of panic. There was no danger here. Really. “Actually, I don’t know,” he told Demarco. Logical, scientific thinking—that was what he needed right now. “We’ve been calling them vultures this whole time because they were busy picking a dead space horse apart when we first spotted them… but on the other hand, they dived right into the fight on the shark’s side when it attacked the Amity. Could be they’re really more like jackals than vultures.”
“Well, if the shark you described is anything to go by, these things sure don’t fit the predator shape,” Demarco pointed out. “For whatever that’s worth.”
“True,” Ferrol nodded. “On the other hand, space horses are cylindrical, too.
Maybe the shape has more to do with the ability to Jump than with any specific feeding or behavior pattern.” He watched as the creature drifted along, just a little faster than the rocks around it, shifting direction slightly every few seconds. An odd hunting pattern, if that was what it was. “I wish we could get a good look at its underside,” he commented under his breath. “The vultures we tangled with had really outsized feeding orifices down there.”
Peripherally, he saw Demarco shrug. “Sure, why not? You’ve wanted one of everything else—might as well bag a junior vulture, too. Let me see if the secondary net gun is ready to fire yet.” He turned to his intercom—
“Motion!” Randall snapped. “That rock just ahead of the vulture.”
Petrol’s display skittered dizzyingly for an instant, locked on a blue-edged shape zigzagging between the rocks. “A butterfly?” he tentatively identified it.
“Looks like one,” Randall confirmed. “In one hell of a hurry, too.”
Ferrol keyed his display for a wide-screen overview, his heart starting to pound in his ears. If their junior vulture was indeed a predator…
But nothing. Even as the butterfly traced out its serrated path, the vulture continued on its slow meandering way, totally oblivious to the potential meal that had fled from practically under its nose.
“Offhand,” Demarco said dryly, “I’d say your junior vulture has a lot to learn about the predator business.”
Ferrol sighed. “Or else just brushed its teeth and doesn’t want to eat yet,” he countered, trying to match the other’s tone. It was a wasted effort.
“So what now?” Demarco asked. “You still want me to net it?”
Ferrol shrugged. “Might as well, I suppose.” The vulture was passing the asteroid the butterfly had fled from; the butterfly itself had long since vanished off the edge of the wide-screen display. Touching a switch, Ferrol keyed back to the vulture close-up again. “Like you said, we’ve got one of everything el—”
And without warning the vulture abruptly shot off the edge of the display.
“Track it!” Ferrol snapped. The wide-screen came back again, giving an even wider view this time—
“God Almighty!” Randall gasped. “Look at that thing go!”
Ferrol nodded, his full attention on the vulture. Zigzagging through the dust and gravel between the larger rocks at a speed Ferrol wouldn’t have guessed it was capable of, it was almost like watching a repeat of the butterfly’s flight.