A thump followed as the airlock engaged, rolled closed and slid into secure position. Tonuac kept an eye on the hardwire, guiding the monofilament with his hands. "Outer door secure. Pressurizing."
Two minutes later, the airlock was at positive, nominal pressure, the seals around the hardline were holding and the inner door rotated aside. Maratay and Clavigero sidled out into a dim, gray-walled passageway. Hadeishi waited until all four Marines had exited the lock and taken up positions on either side. He stepped out into shipside gravity and frowned.
The bulkhead opposite held a dark – apparently broken – map panel. Streaks of rust spilled down unpainted metal. He looked up and down the corridor – some of the overhead lights were missing, while everything had an unmistakable air of decay and long-overdue maintenance. The difference between the immaculate, shipshape Cornuelle and this wreck was striking. Hadeishi shook his head in dismay and consulted his handheld.
"Left-hand corridor," he said, trying to avoid staring at the deck, which had a thin sheet of some kind of oil shimmering underneath the waffle-grid flooring. "Three hundred meters straight on, then there's an internal pressure hatch."
Maratay moved out on point, gliding down the dingy passageway at a run. Hadeishi looked around again and clicked open the channel to the ship. "Sho-sa, what do you make of this?"
The crew is too small, Susan's voice came back, as clear as if she stood at his side. And the ship is too large. According to the builder's plan, there are nearly a hundred and twenty k of corridor and pressurized space inside a Tyr.
"Understood." Hadeishi closed the channel and bent to help Tonuac and Felix haul the rest of the equipment cases into the corridor.
The Palenque, Inbound
One of the v-panes showing a peapod data-feed suddenly went dark. A warning light flared on Magdalena's control panel and the resolution of the composite image on the main display degraded markedly. Now there was only a flickering, indistinct image of a vast, sprawling storm seen from a great height. Barely better than looking out a window at the distant planet. And who knew what was happening under the mottled ochre clouds?
"Only one eye left. We see no better than a snake," the Hesht snarled helplessly. She wanted to pace or run or just crash through a stand of high grass, long legs blurring across hard-packed, dusty ground. Trapped on a tiny ship without proper exercise facilities, limping along at half-speed, a vast distance from the lost steppes of Heshukan, her options had been reduced to shredding the furniture…and now even the joy of exercising her claws palled. "Parker, engine status?"
A comm pane flickered and shifted as a hand in a work glove adjusted a camera lens. The blunt, broad, plant-eating face of Engineer First Isoroku glared out at her. "There has been no change since your last request for status. Maneuver drive three is still offline."
Magdalena showed her incisors in response, though she knew the challenge was lost on these humans. "Where is Parker-tzin?"
The engineer shifted and pointed with a tilted head. The pilot's work boots were partially visible, wedged inside some kind of maintenance accessway. A sort of muffled song was barely audible, leaking out from the opening. Maggie's ears twitched – Parker's idea of a pleasing tune did not coincide with hers. Where are the yowls and shrieks? "He, too, is still busy."
She could tell – feel, really, from the tense tilt of his head and the flare of his nostrils – that the engineer was getting rightfully upset by her constant badgering. Despite their standing difference of opinion over remaining in the system, the Fleet officer had set himself to work in an admirable way. Even a Hesht of her particular temper could see he was making an honest effort. Though every instinct screamed to rush ahead, to boost output on the remaining two maneuver drives – and emit a radiation signature visible throughout half the system – she forced her mouth closed, politely hiding her teeth.
"Isoroku-tzin," she said, forcing the words out in a strangled-sounding voice. "My apologies for interrupting your activities. Please carry on. When drive three is online, I would appreciate…yrrrr…being informed."
The engineer did not respond immediately. In fact, he squinted rather suspiciously at her. At length, lips pursed, he said, "Apology accepted," and signed off the channel, still frowning.
Magdalena ran half-extended claws through her fur, wondering what passed for thought in the heads of these tree-dwelling fruit-eaters. "Rrrr…what is going on down there?"
The storm-covered surface of the third planet mocked her, the single staring red eye of a monstrous serpent. Still on edge, she began experimenting with the different kinds of sensors mounted on the peapod. None of them proved immediately helpful.
"I think," a gruff human voice said from the entryway, "you've confused Isoroku-tzin."
Maggie turned and gave Gunso Fitzsimmons a level stare. In the daily routine of the ship, the Marines stayed off the bridge – Parker claimed they didn't like the smell, though of course he did – and contented themselves with gambling with the scientists, lending the engineer a hand and obsessively checking their equipment.
"I was rude," she said bluntly. "They are working hard and I am impatient."
Fitzsimmons nodded, drifting over to catch the railing circling the command station. "What does our interception window look like?"
"It shrinks." A claw tapped up a plot echoed from the navigational display. "This Shhrast-damned storm is making a mess of plotting pack-leader's pickup. Parker had hoped to make one pass around the planet…" The v-pane showed the path of the Palenque shearing close to the Ephesian atmospheric envelope, then hooking away in a sharp return path for the outer system. "…and picking up speed like a slingstone out again. But now…" she sighed, ears limp with despair, "now we will have to decelerate into a parking orbit, losing precious velocity."
"Are you sure?" Fitzsimmons frowned, leaning over the console. He smelled strangely familiar – bitter, pungent, smoke and old wood – and Magdalena raised her head, plush nose sniffing the air. Then she grinned properly, ears canted forward.
"You've been avoiding Parker-tzin, haven't you?"
The Marine looked at her quizzically for a moment, then smiled in a very impolite way, showing stumpy yellowed teeth. "Use of tabac," he said in a conspiratorial way, "dulls the human sense of smell."
Magdalena shuddered, her fur twitching from head to tail. "A wretched weed," she hissed. "And this is enjoyed by your entire stunted, corrupt race?"
"Parker is a very religious man," the gunso said in a roundabout way. "But Thai-i Isoroku requested our assistance in keeping his engines – well, the Company's engines – free of tabac ash and other contaminants that might otherwise foul power junctions, mar the efficiency of computational cores and soil the sacred decks of the engineering compartments."
Magdalena hissed in delight. "You ate of his kill, pleading an empty belly," she said in mock horror, "while hiding your own in the river-pool! I saw you smoking his disgusting little sticks when we first came aboard."
"Sure." Fitzsimmons shrugged. The whole situation was water off his furless back. "Share and share alike, right? Though Marines are never caught short of supplies." He held up four pink wormlike fingers. "Air, ammo, booze and tabac. Don't need much else."
"He was generous," she started to say, but had to admit – as she had admitted Isoroku's efforts on their behalf – she did not miss the foul smell clinging to her fur and making her sneeze. "But I see the efficiency of the pack-ship is improved by this…deception."