Across at the scanner station, Marlowe looked up. “As long as you’ve got them anyway, Captain,” he said, “you might want to double-check that all this dust isn’t going to block Pegasus’ view of the target star.”
“There shouldn’t be that much dust this far off the ecliptic,” Roman frowned, reaching over to call up the appropriate readouts.
“That’s what I thought, sir,” Marlowe nodded. “But there is. We seem to be heading into it, too—the density’s been slowly increasing.”
Ferrol peered over Roman’s shoulder as the numbers came up. “It won’t be a problem,” he told the other. “That’s nothing but Pegasus’ own dust sweat.”
Roman looked up at him. “I didn’t realize dust sweat got that dense.”
Ferrol shrugged. “We’re working Pegasus pretty hard here, sir, whether it shows the strain or not,” he pointed out. “And there’s an awful lot of surface area out there for it to sweat through.”
“And of course under acceleration like this the whole mass of it falls straight back on top of us,” Roman nodded understanding. “Interesting. One of the many things about space horse transport no one’s really thought about. I’m sure we’ll be finding more of these tidbits over the next few months.”
I can’t wait, Ferrol thought. Leaving Roman’s side, he returned to his own station, listening with half an ear as the captain discussed the Jump/acceleration question with the Tampies. No, they didn’t know whether it was possible, either, but the Handler was willing to try it.
Oh, of course they don’t know, Ferrol thought, a touch of bitterness clouding his vision. It was only the first thing anyone considering space horse warfare would think to investigate; but, no, the Tampies hadn’t done that.
And of course Roman would accept it all at face value. Roman didn’t think about space horse warfare, either.
“Commander?”
Ferrol remembered to smooth out his face before turning around. “Yes, Captain?”
For just a second Roman seemed to study him, as if he’d somehow divined Ferrol’s train of thought. “I’d like us to get a sample of that dust,” he said. “Please inform the survey section, then stay on the intercom and monitor the operation.”
Ferrol glanced at the chrono. “You want the sample taken before or after the Jump, sir?”
Roman pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Good point,” he nodded. “The composition may be different at different times. Let’s take one each before and after the Jump; and then have them continue to take two samples per day for the rest of the voyage.” His eyes shifted to the main display. “Given their meteoroid diet, it might be instructive to see just what they consider to be waste products.”
“Especially if some of it turns out to be gold or platinum or iridium?” Kennedy suggested.
Roman nodded. “The possibility had occurred to me, yes,” he agreed.
Ferrol turned his face back to his board, keying the intercom for Amity’s survey section as he allowed his lip to twist with contempt. The eternal and single-minded goal of profit. Ancient Rome, he’d read somewhere, had also been hard at work trading with its enemies… just before those same enemies destroyed it.
Those who don’t know history, he quoted bitterly to himself, are condemned to repeat it.
Amity was listed on paper as a research/survey ship, and its overlarge scientific contingent turned out to be better at their jobs than Ferrol had really expected. They had the first sample into the ship, onto the lab table, and through a preliminary analysis ten minutes before the Jump… and Ferrol found quiet satisfaction in the feet that the dust, while loaded with strange and exotic silicates, contained not a single scrap of gold, platmium, or iridium.
Chapter 5
Roman touched a button and watched the preliminary analysis of the dust sweat display itself across his screen. Silicon and iron, mainly, with trace amounts of calcium, magnesium, and aluminum. Nothing particularly useful, singly or together. “Have they got a molecular structure analysis yet?” he asked.
“Still working on it,” Ferrol said, head cocked toward his intercom. “Got some really complex molecules in there, but nothing of any obvious value.”
“Well, have them map and store everything they can isolate, anyway,” Roman instructed.
“Yes, sir,” Ferrol said, and relayed the order.
Suppressing a grimace, Roman turned his attention back to the main display. He hadn’t been expecting them to find any gold nuggets, of course—after twenty years of contact with Tampies, the dust sweat must have been analyzed dozens of times, by people far more interested in making money from space horses than he was. But it would have been nice. “Lieutenant? Jump status?”
“One minute to Jump, sir,” she said. “Handler’s signaled ready; all ship systems show green.”
“Marlowe?”
“All inboard and outboard sensors on and recording.”
Marlowe reported. “If there’s anything that can be seen during a Jump, we’ll get it.”
Roman nodded. “All right,” he said, automatically bracing himself. “Let’s do it.”
Several months earlier, Roman had discovered that a space horse Jump was completely unspectacular to watch. Now, he discovered, it was equally unspectacular to experience.
There was no sensation. None at all. One second they were pulling 0.9 gee through the Tampies’ Kialinninni system, with a dull red sun off their port stern; the next second, they were doing exactly the same thing except with a dazzling white sun directly ahead. “Marlowe?” Roman asked.
“Nothing, Captain,” the other said, shaking his head. “No glitches or transitions on any of the inboard sensors. Outboard scanners… no transitional data on any of them, either.”
“What’s the time-quantum on the sensors, the standard half picosecond?” Roman asked.
“Better than that, sir,” Marlowe told him. “The manual claims 0.05 picosecond; I’d guess it closer to 0.1, myself.”
A tenth of a picosecond or less. Zero time, by any reasonable definition. “Thank you. Lieutenant Kennedy? We have Alpha located yet?”
“Working on it, sir,” Kennedy said. Her voice was its usual unawed self, as if Jumping space horses was something she did every week. “Computer’s got the ecliptic plane identified, and it’s calculating from the Tampies’ data where the planet ought to be. It’ll be a few more minutes.”
Roman nodded, keying his intercom as mention of the Tampies brought a sudden idea to mind. “Captain to Handler. Sso-ngu, are you able to speak?”
There was a short pause, and then the screen lit up with the Tampy’s image, his twisted face almost lost between the amplifier helmet and the red-white neckerchief. At least the sleeping animal wasn’t in view this way. “I hear, Rromaa,”
Sso-ngu said. “What is your wish?”
“Does Pegasus know where the planet is we’re heading for? Can it sense it, I mean, from here?”
The Tampy’s face was unreadable, as usual. “I do not know,” he whined. “I know space horses can see many distant stars and solid objects within telekene range; that is all.”
“Yeah,” Roman grunted, annoyed despite the fact he’d half expected that answer.
One of the more maddening Tampy characteristics was their steadfast and muleheaded refusal to ever speculate aloud unless and until they had absolute proof one way or the other. Pressing Sso-ngu on the subject would do nothing but pull increasingly obscure facts about space horses from him; and while that might be a useful exercise some day, at the moment Roman couldn’t be bothered. “Well, then, just stand by,” he told the Tampy. “We’ll have the location in a few minutes and feed the direction back there. Until then, you might as well have Pegasus stop our acceleration.”
“Your wishes are ours.”
Roman frowned at the screen, wondering if the Tampy was being sarcastic. But that was hardly likely. “Very good. Execute.”