turned to swim into the outlock.
There were two small crowds of dolphins in the bay, one at the forward sally hatch and the other clustered about the longboat.
The bow of the small spaceship almost touched the iris of one of the outer hatches. Its stern disappeared into a metal sheath beyond the rear end of the outlock.
When the longboat is gone this place’ll look pretty empty, she thought.
A fin in the party at the lock saw her and sped toward Gillian. He halted abruptly before her and hovered in the water at attention.
“Flankers and scoutsss are ready to depart when you give the word, Gillian.”
“Thank you, Zaa’pht. It will be soon. Is there still no word from the line-repair party, or from Keepiru?”
“No, ssssir. The courier you sent to follow Keepiru should be near the wreck shortly, though.”
It was frustrating. Takkata-Jim had severed the link to the Thennanin wreck, and now it seemed impossible to find the break. For once she cursed the fact that monofilaments could be hidden so well.
For all they knew, some terrible disaster might have struck the work party, at the very site where she was planning on moving Streaker. At least the detectors indicated the space battle was still going on, almost as fierce as ever.
But what was keeping Tom? He was supposed to set off a message bomb when ETs showed up to investigate his ruse. But since the faked distress call there had been nothing.
In addition to everything else, the damned Niss machine wanted to talk to her. It had not set off the hidden alarm in her office to indicate that it was an emergency, but every time she used a comm unit she heard a faint click that signaled the thing’s desire to talk.
It was enough to make a fem just want to climb into bed and stay there.
A sudden commotion broke out near the lock. The wall speaker let out a brief, sloppy squeal of Trinary, followed by a longer report in loose, high-pitched Anglic.
“Sssir!” Zaa’pht turned excitedly. “They report …”
“I heard.” She nodded. “The line’s been repaired. Congratulate the repair team for me, and get them inside for a couple of hours’ rest. Then please ask Heurkah-pete to contact Hikahi right away. He’s to ascertain her situation and tell her we begin moving the ship at 2100 hours unless she objects. I’ll be calling her shortly.”
“Aye, sssir!” Zaa’pht whirled and sped off.
Wattaceti watched her silently, waiting.
“All right,” she said. “Let’s see Takkata-Jim and Metz off. You’ve made certain the crew has offloaded anything not on our checklist, and inspected everything the exiles took aboard?”
“Yesss. They haven’t even got a flaregun. No radio and no more fuel than the minimum needed to reach the island.”
Gillian had gone on her own inspection of the boat a few hours back, while Metz and Takkata-Jim were still packing. She had taken a few additional precautions that nobody else knew about.
“Who’s going with them?”
“Three volunteers, all of them ‘strange’ Stenos. All males. We searched them down to their penile sheathsss. They’re clean. All in the longboat now, ready to go.”
Gillian nodded. “Then, for better or worse, let’s get them out of here so we can get on with other things.”
Mentally she had already begun rehearsing what she had to tell Hikahi.
61
Hikahi & Suessi
“Remember,” she told Tsh’t and Suessi, “maintain radio silence at all cossst. And try to keep those crazy fen in the wreck from eating up all the supplies in the first few days, hmmm?”
Tsh’t signaled assent with a jaw clap, although her eyes were heavy with reservation. Suessi said, “Are you sure you won’t let one of us come with you?”
“I’m sure. If I encounter disaster I want no more lives lost. If I find survivors, I might need every bit of room. In any event, the skiff runs itself, essentially. All I have to do is watch it.”
“You can’t fight while piloting,” Hannes pointed out.
“If I had a gunner along I might be tempted to fight. This way I have to run away. If Streaker is dead or captured, I must be able to return the skiff to you here, or you’ll all be doomed.”
Suessi frowned, but found he had to agree with her reasoning. He was thankful Hikahi had stayed as long as she had, letting them use the skiff’s power to finish preparing a habitat inside the wreck.
We’re all worried about Streaker and the captain, he thought. But Hikahi must be in agony.
“All right, then. Good-bye and good luck,