And yet, even as he watched, he found his guilt unexpectedly dissipating, replaced by interest and a growing sense of respect. Ferrol had always had a rather brash confidence in himself and his opinions, an arrogance Roman had put down to the combination of youth plus the heady political power unofficially backing him from the shadows. But now, with that power suddenly turned against him, Roman realized it hadn’t been nearly as major a part of Ferrol’s internal support as he’d thought. The shock of realizing he was being thrown to the wolves was already changing into a hard and icy anger… and when he again turned to face Roman he was back in control. “How long since this official story came out?” he asked.
“I heard it first during the Defiance debriefings,” Roman told him. “I’d tried to dig into your record a few times before that, but your friends had done too good a job of burying it.”
Ferrol nodded grimly. “And now it’s suddenly accessible again,” he growled.
“Suitably modified, of course.”
“So it would appear,” Roman agreed. “So. What are you going to do now?”
Ferrol exhaled thoughtfully. “Try to interest someone else in the idea of taming space predators, I suppose. Maybe the Sinshahli Psych Institute—that place Demothi came out of.”
“You may find it hard to get a hearing,” Roman warned. “No telling how far afield they’ll let the story circulate.”
“They won’t let it get too far,” Ferrol shook his head. “If too many people heard it, they might wind up having to bring charges against me. The last thing they’ll want is for me to tell my side of it in a public forum.”
“So. Stalemate.”
Ferrol shrugged uncomfortably. “Providing I don’t do anything to shake the tree.
Probably one reason they made sure you knew about it, A good way to deliver the message.” He looked at Roman sharply, as if something had just registered. “But if you’d already heard the official version… why did you let me take the Epilog calving?”
Roman locked eyes with him. “As I said, I didn’t believe the critical parts of it.
You learn a great deal about a man when you spend a year serving with him, Ferrol—you learn about his character, and about his judgment, and which you can trust and under what circumstances.”
Something might have passed over Ferrol’s eyes; Roman wasn’t sure. “Yes, sir,”
Ferrol said, his voice carefully neutral. “I… thank you for your trust, sir. If you’ll excuse me now, it’s been a very tiring few days. With your permission, I’d like to go to my cabin and rest.”
“Certainly,” Roman nodded. “Kennedy’s projection puts us at Kialinninni in about twelve hours; I’ll want you available for bridge duty then.”
“Yes, sir,” Ferrol said, getting to his feet.
“And Commander…?”
Ferrol paused at the door. “Yes, sir?”
“Welcome home.”
This time something did indeed pass over Ferrol’s eyes. “Thank you, sir,” he said, and left.
Something, it seemed to Roman, that had looked a great deal like pain.
Chapter 27
Kialinninni’s sun was a dim red star marked on Roman’s helm display by a flashing circle, moving with the rest of the stars across the screen as Sleipnir came around in a gentle arc to line up with it. For a moment, before the space horse blocked it, the star was visible in the forward port, and Roman threw a quick look out at it. It was even harder to see there than it was on the display. “Sso-ngu, are you sure Sleipnir can see the target star?” he asked into the intercom.
“He can,” the Tampy replied.
Roman frowned again at the helm display; but Sso-ngu ought to know what he was talking about. “All right. Stand by to Jump at my command. And let me know immediately if this procedure startles or frightens Sleipnir.” He keyed engineering into the circuit. “Commander Stolt; Dr. Tenzing—you ready?”
“Just waiting for the order, sir,” Stolt replied. “The boats are all tanked up and ready to go, and Dr. Tenzing’s double-checked the spray pattern.”
“Very good. Launch.”
“Yes, sir. Launching… now.”
Roman shifted his attention to the tactical display. From Amity’s hanger came Stolt’s two gimmicked boats, flying together in close formation as they came up Amity’s hull. They passed the bow and began to split apart; and by the time they reached Sleipnir they were on opposite sides of the space horse’s bulk.
“Starting the gas spray,” Stolt announced.
On Roman’s display the two boats, moving up opposite sides of Sleipnir’s cylindrical mass now, began to trail what showed up on the screen as a cohesivelooking mist. Smoothly, and in perfect synch, the boats altered direction, and as Roman watched began tracing out a double-helix pattern a few meters above the space horse’s surface. The mist spread slowly out behind them as they circled near Sleipnir’s head and started back, and by the time they were once again traveling alongside the rein lines the mist had settled in around Sleipnir, circling and engulfing the creature like a halo from some strange medieval painting.
“Boats almost back,” Stolt said. “ETA one minute.”
Roman nodded. “Marlowe?”
“Cloud holding together nicely,” the other reported. “Expanding just enough to fill in the whole gap around Sleipnir.”
“Good.” A thought occurred to him—“When you get a minute, you probably ought to let the Scapa Flow know what we’re doing—we don’t want them to be startled.”
“Yes, sir.” Marlowe turned to his intercom.
Roman returned his attention to the tactical. “Sso-ngu? Is Sleipnir bothered at all by the gas mixture?”
“He is not. He is facing the Kialinninni star, Rro-maa, and is ready to Jump.”
And was meanwhile busy exuding all the information any passing shark would ever need to find the Tampy corral. If this scheme Tenzing had dreamed up didn’t work…
And the irony of it all was that if it did work they would probably never know it.
On the tactical, the boats hovering close beside Amity’s hull disappeared. “Boats aboard, Captain,” Stolt announced. “Hangar door sealing… we’re ready here.”
“Sso-ngu?”
“I hear, Rro-maa.”
Roman settled himself and shifted his eyes to the forward viewscreen. “All right, then. Everyone ready; fire, and Jump.”
At the edge of the screen the comm laser lanced out, its passage marked just visibly by the flicker of ionized hydrogen atoms in its path. The dim line shifted inward, touched the edge of the gas cloud ahead—
And, abruptly, Sleipnir was sheathed in flame.
It wasn’t a terribly hot fire, as fires went—Tenzing had made sure of that when preparing his mixture. The temperature at Sleipnir’s skin would be no more than six hundred degrees Celsius, Roman knew—hardly worth a space horse’s notice, but more than enough to char and scramble the complex molecules in the dust sweat beyond any possible reconstruction.
Or so the logic went. But for that first flaring instant, none of the chemistry or biology or logic really mattered. For that one single instant Sleipnir was a glimpse into semi-mythic racial memories of humanity’s past: an echo of ancient Viking funeral pyres, or of the self-immolation of the Phoenix, or of the fiery horror of Dante’s Inferno.
The flame flickered out, and the vision faded, and Roman took a deep breath, feeling vaguely foolish. He glanced around the bridge, wondering if anyone had noticed. But all were still huddled over their consoles, busy with the usual tasks of a Jump.
The Jump. Belatedly, Roman dropped his eyes back to his displays, giving them a quick scan. If the trick hadn’t worked…
It had. Dead ahead on the nav display was the dim globe of Kialinninni’s sun; and a check of the timeline showed that the Jump had taken place at virtually the height of the flash fire.
He looked up, to find Ferrol’s eyes on him. “It seems to have worked,” he commented to the other.
“Looks that way,” Ferrol nodded. “So. Now what?”