“Don’t you remember?” Roman ground out. “The Tampies have been pulling their space horses back to Kialinninni. All of them.”
And abruptly, Ferrol got it. “Leaving dust sweat trails over the place,” he breathed.
“Every one of them pointing straight at the corral.”
“Exactly,” Roman said tightly. “We’ve got to warn them right away. Maybe we can do something to confuse the trail—send ships out to drop sub-nuke missiles at the original Jump points or something.”
Ferrol chewed hard at his lower lip. The possibilities here… “I’d like to come along, captain,” he said. “If we head toward you right now, we should be able to rendezvous in half an hour or so.”
Roman had been looking away, presumably at Kennedy. Now, very deliberately, he looked back at Ferrol. “May I ask why?”
Ferrol forced himself to hold the other’s gaze. “I’m still Amity’s exec,” he reminded the other, aware for the first time in hours of the needler pressing against his side beneath his tunic. The needler, and the Senator’s envelope… “It’s where I belong. Even if you choose to confine me to quarters.” A sudden thought occurred to him—“Besides, which, the Amity is far better equipped to handle these animal samples than we are. And since it’ll probably take at least a few hours to get back, this would give Dr. Tenzing a head start on studying them.”
Roman pursed his lips, frowning at Ferrol as if trying to read the motive behind the words. Ferrol held his breath… and at last, almost reluctantly, the other nodded.
“Very well, Commander. Proceed with your capture, and prepare your samples for transfer. We’ll rendezvous with you in an hour.”
Ferrol exhaled quietly. “Yes, sir. Thank you, Captain.”
“I’ll talk to you then. Amity out.”
The display went blank. For a long moment Ferrol stared at it, feeling his stomach knotting up within him. Once again, in the face of totally inexcusable actions, Roman was going to give him another chance… and once again, Ferrol was very likely going to betray that trust.
He’d known, from the beginning, that this would probably happen. What he hadn’t expected was that it would hurt.
“First Jump completed, Captain,” Kennedy reported from the bridge. “We’ll be driving cross-system now for about twenty minutes to get into proper position for the second.”
Roman nodded. “Good. Any problems with the Scapa Flow?”
“Not so far.” She paused, her eyes flicking away from Roman’s face for a quick scan of her displays. “No. The tether line’s holding just fine, and Sleipnir doesn’t seem to be having any trouble at all with the extra mass.”
“Very good. Keep me informed.”
The intercom screen blanked, and he looked back up. On the other side of his desk, Ferrol was sitting quietly, trying to exude respect and a sort of righteous dignity.
Not that it was really coming off. “Probably a slightly bumpy ride for them back there,” Roman told him. “We can still arrange to berth your men here, you know.”
Ferrol shrugged. “I appreciate the offer, sir, but to be perfectly honest, they’ve got better accomodations in the Scapa Flow than they’d have here.”
“As well as a better chance of cutting the tether line and escaping once we’re back within Mitsuushi distance of the Cordonale?” Roman asked pointedly.
Ferrol seemed to draw himself up. “I’ve given you the ship’s parole, Captain,” he said, his voice stiff. “They won’t try to leave.”
Roman thought about that. “No,” he acknowledged, “I don’t believe they will. My apologies, Commander.”
“Thank you.” Ferrol seemed to brace himself. “So. Do I get a formal hearing before I’m confined to quarters? Or are we going to hold off on such formalities until we get back to Earth?”
Roman studied him. The semi-genuine respect was still there, and the righteous innocence too… but there was no real worry. Which seemed just a little odd, considering how much a man in Ferrol’s position should have to worry about.
“You assume,” he said, “that I’ll be leveling charges.”
Ferrol frowned, a touch of uncertainty flicking across his eyes. “Aren’t you?”
“Depends partly on why you did it, I suppose,” Roman said evenly. “Motivation is a relevant part of action, wouldn’t you say?”
“Depends on whether you’re talking ethics or legalities,” Ferrol countered.
Roman shrugged. “Perhaps. At any rate, I had a chance to speak briefly to Wwiskhaa while you were helping transfer your specimens aboard, before he and the lander took Epilog and headed for home. He told me you were looking for some sort of flying sheep dog to help the Tampies protect their space horses.” He cocked an eyebrow.
“And you, obviously, don’t believe that,” Ferrol said, an edge of challenge in his voice.
“You were talking to a Tampy,” Roman reminded him.
“So naturally you assume I was lying through my teeth.”
Roman just waited; and after a moment Ferrol snorted. “As it happens, I was more or less telling the truth,” he growled. “Once we knew space horses weren’t just some isolated evolutionary accident, it stood to reason that they had to be part of a complete space-going ecosystem. Any ecosystem worth its salt ought to have several different varieties of predators, so I went off to hunt for them.”
“Without any scrap of discussion or authorization,” Roman pointed out.
“True,” Ferrol admitted. “On the other hand, Rrin-saa had already said he and the other Tampies were going to collect their marbles and go home when we got back to Solomon. If I hadn’t taken the opportunity Epilog presented, we might never have gotten another chance.” A half-smile twitched at the corners of his mouth.
“Besides, if I’d told you in advance your head would be on the block beside mine now.”
“Not if I’d simply locked you in your cabin in the first place,” Roman said coldly.
Ferrol raised his hands, palms upward, all innocence again. “If you had, we’d never have found the black hole ecology.”
For if it prosper, the old cynicism ran through Roman’s mind, none dare call it treason. The politics of convenience and end result… the politics on which the Cordonale seemed to run these days. “You said what you’d told Wwis-khaa was more or less the truth. I presume from that that you had something other than guard duty in mind for these theoretical predators of yours?”
Ferrol leaned forward, a sudden earnestness in his face. “We can train them, Captain,” he said, a quiet fire beneath the words. “Train them like the Tampies have trained space horses; only these would be ours. Ours. With our own space—whatever; wolves, maybe—with space-wolf ships the universe would be open to us. We could explore and colonize—we could do whatever we damn well pleased, and all of it without the Tampies interfering and hand-wringing us to death.”
“Including the building of your warhorse fleet?” Roman asked.
“Including any—” Ferrol broke off, his eyes narrowing as his mind belatedly caught up with his ears. “What did you say?”
“Your warhorse fleet,” Roman repeated quietly. “The one you’ve been trying to sell to your Senate backers for quite some time now. Since before Amity’s first calving, anyway; possibly as far back as your escape from the Dryden and me in the Cemwanninni yishyar system.”
Ferrol stared at him. “Where did—?” He swallowed visibly, took a deep breath. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, clearly striving for an indignant tone.
“I’m talking about you,” Roman said, watching the other carefully. “A man who lied under oath and misappropriated Senate funds for the purposes of poaching space horses from the Cemwanninni system. And who then—”
“I never appropriated anything,” Ferrol protested. The dazed look was still there…
but behind it was a growing sense of horror. “Ever. None of that was on my own—they recruited me for that, damn it.”
“As a matter of fact, I believe you,” Roman told him. “But the official story that’s begun to make the rounds says otherwise. My guess is that your former supporters are laying the groundwork to discredit anything you might possibly say against them in the future.”
Slowly, Ferrol’s gaze slipped from Roman’s face and drifted to the port, and for a long minute he stared silently out at the stars. Roman watched the play of emotions across the younger man’s face, feeling a pang of guilt at having had to be the one to drop the hammer on Ferrol’s head.