go together! If you have things to do here, I’ll wait for you!”
He walked along without answering. He couldn’t think of anything to say. It was bitter to win her respect and affection at last, only to lose her within hours.
If this is what being grown up means, they can have it, he thought. It sucks.
As they approached the pool, sounds of loud argument came from that direction. Toshio hurried. Dennie trotted alongside until they burst into the clearing.
Charles Dart screamed and clutched at a slender cylinder that was gripped at the other end by the manipulator arm of Takkata-Jim’s spider. Charlie strained against the pull of the waldo-machine. Takkata-Jim grinned open-mouthed.
The tug of war lasted for a few seconds as the neo-chimp’s powerful muscles strained, then the cylinder popped out of his hands. He fell back to the dust and barely stopped before rolling into the pool. He hopped up and shrieked his anger.
Toshio saw three other Stenos-controlled spiders trooping off toward the longboat. Each carried another of the thin cylinders. Toshio stopped in his tracks when he got a good look at the one Takkata-Jim had taken. His eyes went wide.
“There is no longer any danger,” Takkata-Jim told him. His voice carried insouciance. “I have confissscated these. They’ll be kept safe aboard my boat, and there will be no harm.”
“They’re mine, you thief!” Charles Dart hopped angrily, and his hands fluttered. “You criminal!” he growled. “You think I don’t know you tried to m-murder Creideiki? We all know you did! You wrecked the buoys to destroy the evidence! And n-now you steal the tools of m-my trade!”
“Which you stole from Streaker’s armory, no doubt. Or do you wish to call Dr. Baskin for confirmation that they truly are yoursss?”
Dart growled and showed an impressive display of teeth. He whirled away from the neo-dolphin and sat down in the dust in front of a complex diving robot, freshly unpacked on the verge of the pool.
Takkata-Jim’s spider started to turn, but the fin noticed Toshio looking at him. For just a moment, Takkata-Jim’s cool reserve broke under the youth’s fierce gaze. He looked away, and then back at Toshio.
“Don’t-t believe everything you hear, boy-human,” he said. “Much I have done, and will do, and I’m convinced I am right. But it wasss not I who hurt Creideiki.”
“Did you destroy the buoys?” Toshio could sense Dennie standing close behind him, watching the large dolphin silently over his shoulder
“Yesss. But it was not I who ssset the trap. Like King Henry with Beckett-t, I only found out about it after. Tell this, on Earth, if by some strange chance you should escape and I don’t. Another took the initiative.”
“Who did it, then?” Toshio’s fists were tight balls.
A long sigh escaped Takkata-Jim’s blowmouth.
“Our Dr. Metz wrung from the Survey Board berths for some who shouldn’t have been on this voyage. He was impatient. A few of his Stenos had … unusual family trees.”
“The Stenos …”
“A few Stenos! I am not one of Metz’s experiments! I am a starship officer. I earned my place!” The dolphin’s voice was defiant.
“When the pressure built to the breaking point, some of them turned to me. I thought I could control them. But there was one who turned out to be more than even I could manage. Tell them if you get home, Toshio Iwashika. Tell them on Earth that it’sss possible to turn a dolphin into a monster. They should be warned.”
Takkata-Jim gave him one long, intent look, then his spider turned away and followed his crew back to the longboat.
“He’s a liar!” Dennie whispered after he had gone. “He sounds so reasonable and logical, but I shiver when I listen to him!”
Toshio watched the spider disappear down the trail.
“No,” he said. “He is ambitious, and maybe crazy too. He’s probably a traitor, as well. But for some reason I think everything he said was explicitly true. Maybe a surface honesty is what he clings to now, for pride’s sake.”
He turned, shaking his head. “Not that that makes him any less dangerous.”
He approached Charles Dart, who looked up with a friendly smile. Toshio squatted near the chimp planetologist.
“Dr. Dart, how big were they?”
“Were what, Toshio? Say! Have you seen this new robot? I made it up special. It can dive to the base of the shaft, then dig laterally to those big magma tunnels we detected …”
“How big were they, Charlie?” Toshio demanded. He was tense, and ready to throttle the chimpanzee. “Tell me!”
Dart glanced briefly, guiltily,