of bright, ever self-deprecating Dennie Sudman, of the erudite Sah’ot, and Toshio, so very young and noble.
“Has T-Tom called? Is there an emergency?”
“Neither, yet. But …”
“Then what-t?”
She couldn’t explain. She tried in Trinary.
* What a piercing sound I hear—
* The peal of bugles, engines rising—
* The tears of love abandoned—
* Soon, so very soon— *
There was a long silence from the skiff. Then, it was not Hikahi’s voice, but Creideiki’s, that answered. In his repetitious, simply-phrased Trinary, there was something Gillian could only catch a hint of, something deep and a little eerie.
* Sounds, All Sounds
Answer Something
Answer Something :
* Acts, All Acts
Make Sounds
Make Sounds :
* But Duty, All Duty
Calls Silently
Calls Silently :
Gillian didn’t breathe as she listened to Creideiki’s last note fall away. Her spine was chilled.
“ ’Bye, Gillian,” Hikahi said. “You do what you have to. We’ll be back quick-k as we can. But don’t wait for usss.”
“Hikahi!” Gillian reached for the comm link, but the carrier wave cut off before she could say another word.
95
Toshio
“Both airlocks are bolted from the inside,” Toshio panted when he returned to the hiding place. “Looks like we try it your way.”
Charles Dart nodded, and led him to the impulse thrusters at the stern of the small spacecraft.
Twice they had hidden themselves by climbing tall trees as patrolling Stenos passed below. It seemed not to occur to the mad fen to look above for their quarry. But Toshio knew they’d be deadly if they ever caught him and Charlie in the open.
Charlie removed the rear cover to the maintenance bay between the engines. “I got in by crawling between the feedlines, over there, until I reached the access plate in that bulkhead.” He pointed. Toshio peered into the maze of pipes.
He looked back at Dart, amazed. “No wonder nobody expected a stowaway. Is this how you got into the armory, as well? By climbing through ducts where no human could fit?”
The planetologist nodded. “I guess you can’t go in with me. That means I gotta get the little critters out by myself, right?”
Toshio nodded. “I think they’re in the aft hold. Here’s the voder”
He handed over the translator. It looked like a large medallion hanging from a neck-chain. All neo-chimps knew about voders, since they generally had trouble talking until the age of three. Charlie slipped it over his head. He started to climb into the small opening, but stopped and looked sidelong at the middie.
“Say, Toshio. Imagine this was one of those 20th-century ‘zoo’ ships, and those were a bunch of pre-sentient chimps in the hold of a clipper ship—or whatever they used back then—on their way from Africa to some laboratory or circus. Would you have snuck in to rescue them?”
Toshio shrugged. “I don’t honestly know, Charlie. I’d like to think I would’ve. But I really don’t know what I’d’ve done.”
The neo-chimp met the human’s eyes for a long instant, then he grunted. “Okay, you guard the rear.”
He took a boost from Toshio and squirmed into the mechanical maze. Toshio squatted beneath the thruster tubes and listened to the forest. While Charlie struggled to get the inner access plate off, he made what felt like a terrible racket. Then it stopped.
Toshio slid into the forest to make a cautious circuit of the immediate area.
From crashing sounds up in the direction of the Kiqui village, he guessed the Stenos were amusing themselves with a destructive spree. He hoped none of the little natives had come back yet to witness, or worse, be caught in the violence.
He returned to the longboat and looked at his watch. Seventeen minutes until the bomb went off. They were cutting it close.
He reached into the maintenance area and spent a few minutes twiddling with some of the valves, spoiling their settings. Of course, Takkata-Jim didn’t need the thrusters at all. If he was, indeed, refueled, he could take off on gravitics. Leaving the access panel loose would decrease the boat’s aerodynamic stability, but even that effect would be slight. Longboats like these were built rugged.
He stopped and listened. The rampage through the forest was heading this way again. The fen were on their way back.
“Hurry up, Charlie!” He fingered the grip of his holstered needler, not certain he could aim well enough to hit the vulnerable patches where the dolphins were unprotected by the metal-sided spiders.
“Come on!”
There came a series of small, wet, slapping sounds from within the cavity. Intermittent squeaks echoed from the narrow confines, and then he saw a pair of widely splayed, green-finned hands.
They