Uplift - Startide Rising Part 39

The trickles sluiced over the stubby stasis f.l.a.n.g.es. They sent jagged trails over the forward viewports, dark and clear in the intermittent moonlight.

Trails penetrated the narrow cracks around the aft airlock, using the straight channels to pour dribbling streams out onto the muddy ground.

There came a tiny mechanical hiss, barely louder than the rainfall. The cracks around the airlock widened almost imperceptibly. Neighboring streams merged to fill the new crevices. A pool began to form in a dirt basin below the hatch.

The doorway cracked open a little farther. More streams merged to pour in, as if seeking to enter the s.h.i.+p. All at once a gurgling stream poured from the bottom of the crack. The flow became a gus.h.i.+ng waterfall that splashed into a puddle below. Then, just as abruptly, the torrent subsided.

The armored hatch slid open with a muted sigh. The rain sent a flurry of slanting droplets pelting into the opening.

A dark, helmeted figure stood in the threshold, ignoring the onslaught. It turned to look left and right, then stepped out and splashed in the puddle. The hatch shut again with a whine and a small click.

The figure bent into the wind, searching in the darkness for a trail.

Dennie sat up suddenly at the sound of wet footsteps. With her hand at her breast she whispered.

"Tos.h.i.+o?"

The tent's fly was pushed aside and the flap zipped open. For a moment a dark shape loomed. Then a quiet voice whispered. "Yeah, it's me."

Dennie's rapid pulse subsided. "I was afraid it was somebody else."

"Who'd you expect, Dennie? Charlie Dart? Come out of his tent to ravish you? Or, better yet, one of the Kiqui?" He teased her gently, but could not hide the tension in his voice.

He shrugged out of his drysuit and helmet which he hung on a peg by the opening. In his underwear, Tos.h.i.+o crawled over to his own sleeping bag and slid in.

"Where have you been?"

"Nowhere. Go back to sleep, Dennie."

The rain pattered on the fly in an uneven tattoo. She remained sitting up, looking at him in the faint light from the opening. She could see little more than the whites of his eyes, staring straight up at nothing.

"Please Tosh, tell me. When I woke up and you weren't in your sleeping bag ..." Her voice trailed off as he turned to look back at her. The difference that had grown in Tos.h.i.+o Iwas.h.i.+ka the last week or so was never more manifest than in his narrowed expression, than in this slitted intensity in his eyes.

She heard him sigh finally. "All right, Dennie. I was just over at the longboat. I snuck inside and had a look around."

Dennie's pulse sped again. She started to speak, stopped, then finally said, "Wasn't that dangerous? I mean there's no telling how Takkata-Jim might react! Especially if he really is a traitor."

Tos.h.i.+o shrugged. "There was something I had to find out."

"But how could you get in and out without being caught?"

Tos.h.i.+o rolled over onto one elbow. She saw a brief flash of white as he smiled slightly. "A middie sometimes knows things even the engineering officers never find out, Dennie. Especially when it comes to hiding places aboard s.h.i.+p. When off-duty time comes, there's always a pilot or a lieutenant around thinking up homework for idle hands and fins ... always just a little more astrogation or protocol to study, for instance. Akki and I used to grab sack time in the hold of the longboat. We learned how to open the locks without it flas.h.i.+ng on the control room."

Dennie shook her head. "I'm glad you didn't tell me you were going, after all. I would have died of worry"

Tos.h.i.+o frowned. Now Dennie was beginning to sound like his mother again. Dennie still wasn't happy about having to leave while he stayed behind. Tos.h.i.+o hoped she wouldn't take this opportunity to bring up the subject again.

She lay down and faced him, using her arm as a pillow. She thought for a moment, then whispered. "What did you find out?"

Tos.h.i.+o closed his eyes. "You might as well know," he said. "I'll want you to tell Gillian in case I can't get through to her in the morning. I found out what Takkata-Jim is doing with those bombs he took from Charlie.

"He's converting them to fuel for the longboat."

Dennie blinked. "But ... but what can we do about it?"

"I don't know! I'm not even sure we have to do anything about it. After all, in a couple weeks his acc.u.mulators would be recharged enough to lift him off anyway. Maybe Gillian doesn't care.

"On the other hand, it might be darned important. I still haven't figured it all out yet. I may have to do something pretty drastic."

He had seen the partially dismantled bombs through the thick window of the security door to the longboat's specimen lab. Getting to them would be considerably more difficult than simply sneaking back aboard.

"Whatever happens," he tried to rea.s.sure her, "I'm sure it will all be all right. You just make certain your notes are all packed properly in the morning. That data on the Kiqui is the second most important thing to come out of this crazy odyssey, and it's got to get back. Okay?"

"Sure, Tosh."

He let gravity pull him over onto his back. He closed his eyes and breathed slowly to feign sleep.

"Tos.h.i.+o?"

The young man sighed. "Yes, Denn ..."

"Um, it's about Sah'ot. He's only leaving to escort me. Otherwise I think you'd have a mutiny on your hands."

"I know. He wants to stay and listen to those underground 'voices' of his." Tos.h.i.+o rubbed his eyes, wondering why Dennie was keeping him awake with all this. He already had listened to Sah'ot's importunities.

"Don't shrug them off like that, Tosh. He says Creideiki listened to them, too, and that he had to cut the channel to break the captain out of a listening trance, the sounds were so fascinating."

"The captain is a brain-damaged cripple." The words were bitter. "And Sah'ot is an egocentric, unstable ..."

"I used to think so too," Dennie interrupted. "He used to scare me until I learned he was really quite sweet and harmless. But even if we could suppose the two fen were having hallucinations, there's the stuff I've been finding out about the metal-mounds."

"Mmmph," Tos.h.i.+o commented sleepily. "What is it? More about the metal-mounds being alive?"

Dennie winced a little at his mild disparagement. "Yes, and the weird eco-niche of the drill-trees. Tos.h.i.+o, I did an a.n.a.lysis on my pocketcomp, and there's only one possible solution! The drill-tree shafts are part of the life cycle of one organism-an organism that lives part of its life cycle above the surface as a superficially simple coral colony, and later falls into the pit prepared for it ..."

"All that clever adaptation and energy expended to dig a grave for itself?" Tos.h.i.+o cut in.

"No! Not a grave! A channel! The metal-mound is only the beginning of this creature's life cycle ... the larval stage. Its destiny as an adult form lies below, below the shallow crust of the planet, where convective veins of magma can provide all the energy a metallo-organic life form might ever need!"

Tos.h.i.+o tried earnestly to pay attention, but his thoughts kept drifting-to bombs, to traitors, to worry over Akki, his missing comrade, and to a man somewhere far to the north, who deserved to have someone waiting for him if-when he finally returned to his island launching point.

" ... only thing wrong is there's no way I see that such a life form could have evolved! There's no sign of intermediate forms, no mention of any possible precursors in the old Library records on Kithrup ... and this is certainly unique enough a life form to merit mention!"

"Mmm-hmmm."

Dennie looked over at Tos.h.i.+o. His arm was over his eyes and he breathed slowly as if drifting off into slumber. But she saw a fine vein on his temple pulse rapidly, and his other fist clenched at even intervals.

She lay there watching him in the dimness. She wanted to shake him and make him listen to her!

Why am I pestering him like this. She suddenly asked herself. Sure, the stuff's important, but it's all intellectual, and Tos.h.i.+o's got our corner of the world on his shoulders. He's so young, yet he's carrying a fighting man's load now.

How do I feel about that?

A queasy stomach told her. I'm pestering him because I want attention.

I want his attention she corrected. In my clumsy way I've been trying to give him opportunities to ...

Nervously, she faced her own foolishness.

If I, the older one, can get my signals this crossed, I can hardly expect him to figure out the cues, she realized at last.

Her hand reached out. It stopped just short of the glossy black hair that lay in long, wet strands over his temples. Trembling, she looked again at her feelings, and saw only fear of rejection holding her back.

As if on a will of its own, her hand moved to touch the soft stubble on Tos.h.i.+o's cheek. The youth started and turned to look at her, wide-eyed.

"Tos.h.i.+o," she swallowed. "I'm cold."

78 ::: Tom Orley When there came a moment of relative calm, Tom made a mental note. Remind me next time, he told himself, not to go around kicking hornets' nests.

He sucked on one end of the makes.h.i.+ft breathing tube. The other end protruded from the surface of a tiny opening in the weedscape. Fortunately, he didn't have to pull in quite so much air this time, to supplement what his mask provided. There was more dissolved oxygen in this area.

Battle beams sizzled overhead again, and weak cries carried to him from the miniature war going on above. Twice, the water trembled from nearby explosions.

At least this time I don't have to worry about being baked by the near misses, he consoled himself. All these stragglers have are hand weapons.

Tom smiled at that irony. All they had were hand weapons.

He had picked off two of the Tandu in that first ambush, before they could snap up their particle guns to fire back.

More importantly, he managed to wing the s.h.a.ggy Episiarch before diving head-first into a hole in the weeds.

He had cut it close. One near-miss had left second degree burns on the sole of his bare left foot. In that last instant he glimpsed the Episiarch rearing in outrage, a nimbus of unreality coruscating like a fiery halo around its head. Tom thought he momentarily saw stars through that wavering brilliance.

The Tandu flailed to stay upon their wildly bucking causeway. That probably was what spoiled their much vaunted aim, and accounted for his still being alive.

As he had expected, the Tandu's vengeance hunt had led them westward. He popped up, from time to time, to keep their interest keen with brief enfilades of needles.

Then, as he swam between openings in the weedscape, the battle seemed to take off without him. He heard sounds of combat and knew his pursuers had come into contact with another party of ET stragglers.

Tom had left then, underwater, in search of other mischief to do.

The battle noise drifted away from his present position. From his brief glimpse an hour ago, this particular skirmish seemed to involve a half-dozen Gubru and three battered, balloon-tired rover machines of some type. Tom hadn't been able to tell if they were robots or crewed, but they had seemed unable to adapt to the tricky surface, for all of their firepower.

He listened for a minute, then coiled his tube and put it away in his waistband. He rose quietly to the surface of the tiny pool and risked lifting his eyes to the level of the interwoven loops of weed.

In his mosquito raids, he had moved toward the eggsh.e.l.l wreck. Now he saw that it was only a few hundred meters away. Two smoking ruins told of the fate of the wheeled machines. As he watched, first one, then the other slowly sank out of sight. Three slime-covered Gubru, apparently the last of their party, struggled over the mora.s.s toward the floating s.h.i.+p. Their feathers were plastered against their slender, hawk-beaked bodies. They looked desperately unhappy.

Tom rose up and saw flashes of more fighting to the south.

Three hours before, a small Soro scouts.h.i.+p had come diving in, strafing all in sight, until a delta-winged Tandu atmospheric fighter swooped out of the clouds to intercept it. They blasted away at each other, hara.s.sed by small arms fire from below, until they finally collided in a fiery explosion, falling to the sea in a tangled heap.

About an hour later the story repeated itself. This time the partic.i.p.ants were a lumbering Pthaca rescue-tender and a battered spears.h.i.+p of the Brothers of the Night. Their wreckage joined the smoky ruins which slowly subsided in every direction.

No food, no place to hide, and the only race of fanatics I really want to see is the one not represented out here in this dribble-dribble charnel house.

The message bomb pressed under his waistband. Again, he wished he knew whether or not to use it.

Gillian has to be worried by now, he thought. Thank G.o.d, at least she's safe.

And the battle's still going on. That means there's still time. We've still got a chance.

Yes. And dolphins like to go for long walks along the beach.

Ah, well. Let's see if there's some more trouble I can cause.

79 ::: Galactics The Soro, Krat, cursed at the strategy schematic. Her clients took the precaution of backing away while she vented her anger by tearing great rips out of the vletoor cus.h.i.+on.

Four s.h.i.+ps lost! To only one by the Tandu! The recent battle had been a disaster!

And meanwhile, the sideshow down at the planet's surface was bleeding away her small support craft in ones and twos!

It seemed that tiny remnants of all of the defeated fleets, stragglers that had hidden out on moons or planetoids, must have decided the Earthlings were hiding near that volcano down in Kithrup's mid-northern lat.i.tudes. Why did they think that?

Because surely n.o.body would be fighting over nothing at all, would they? The skirmish had a momentum all its own by now. Who would have thought that the defeated alliances would have hidden away so much firepower for one last desperate attempt at the prize?

Krat's mating claw flexed in wrath. She couldn't afford to ignore the possibility that they were right. What if the distress call had, indeed, emanated from the Earthlings' s.h.i.+p? No doubt this was some sort of fiendish human distraction, but she could not risk the chance that the fugitives actually were there.

"Have the Thennanin called yet?" she snapped.

A Pil from the communications section bowed quickly and answered. "Not yet, Fleet-Mother, though they have pulled away from their Tandu allies. We expect to hear from Buoult soon:'

Krat nodded curtly. "Let me know the very instant!" The Pil a.s.sented hurriedly and backed away.

Krat went back to considering her options. Finally, it came down to deciding which damaged and nearly useless vessel she could spare from the coming battle for one more foray to the planet's surface.

Briefly, she toyed with the idea of sending a Thennanin s.h.i.+p once the upcoming alliance against the now-pre-eminent Tandu was consummated. But then she decided that would be unwise. Best to keep the priggish, sanctimonious Thennanin up here where she could keep her eyes on them. She would choose one of her own small cripples to go.

Krat contemplated a mental image of the Earthlings -- dough-skinned, spindly, s.h.a.ggy-maned humans, who were sneakiness embodied-and their weird, squawking, handless dolphin clients.

When they are finally mine, she thought, I will make them regret the trouble they are causing me.