spine to cylinder wall, holding the ship rigid and carrying power to the stasis flanges. Between these columns were dolphin work areas, arrayed on supports of resilient mesh.
Dolphins, even the Tursiops amicus, didn’t like being cooped up any more than they had to be. In space, the crew worked in the weightless openness of the central bay, jetting about in humid air. But Creideiki had to land his damaged ship in an ocean. And this meant he had also had to flood the ship in order to enable his workers to reach their instruments.
The bay shimmered with a barely suppressed effervescence. Here and there tiny streams of bubbles rose toward the curving ceiling. The waters of Kithrup were carefully filtered, solvents added, and oxygen forced in to make oxywater. Neo-dolphins had been gene-crafted to be able to breathe it, though they didn’t enjoy it much.
Dennie looked around, puzzled. Where was everyone?
Motion caught her eye. Above the five-meter span of the central spine, two dolphins and two humans swam rapidly toward the ship’s bow. “Hey!” she shouted. “Wait for me!”
The facemask was supposed to focus and amplify her voice, but to Dennie it sounded as if the water swallowed her words.
The fen stopped at once. In unison they swooped about toward her. The two humans swam on for a few moments, then paused and looked about, moving their arms slowly. When they caught sight of Dennie, one of them waved.
“Hurry up, honored biologissst!” A large, charcoal-gray dolphin in heavy work harness swooped past Dennie. The other one circled about impatiently.
Dennie swam as hard as she could. “What’s going on? Is the space battle over? Has someone found us?”
A stocky black man grinned as she approached. The other human, a tall, stately, blonde woman, impatiently turned to go as soon as Dennie had caught up.
“Now, wouldn’t we have heard alarms, then, if there’d been ETs comin’?” The black man kidded her as they swam above the spine. Why Emerson D’Anite, with his dark coloration, chose at times to affect a burr was a secret which Dennie had yet to pry out of him.
She was relieved to hear they weren’t under attack, but if the Galactics weren’t coming to get them yet, what was all the fuss?
“The prospecting party!” The fate of the lost patrol had completely slipped her mind, so caught up had she been in her own problems. “Gillian, have they come back? Have Toshio and Hikahi returned?”
The older woman swam with a reaching, long-limbed grace that Dennie envied. Her low, alto voice somehow carried well through the water Her expression was grim.
“Yes Dennie, they’re back. But at least four of them are dead.”
Dennie gasped. She had to make an effort to keep up. “Dead? How …? Who …?”
Gillian Baskin didn’t slacken her pace. She answered over her shoulder “We aren’t sure how.… When Brookida made it back, he mentioned Phip-pit and Ssassia … and told the rescue party they’d probably find others beached or killed.”
“Brookida …?”
Emerson jogged her with his elbow. “And where have you been? It was announced when he got in, hours ago. Mr Orley took old Hannes and twenty crewfen to find Hikahi and the others.”
“I … I must have been asleep at the time.” Dennie contemplated slowly taking apart a certain chimpanzee. Why didn’t Charlie tell me when I came in for work? It probably slipped his mind entirely. One of these days that chimp’s monomania will cause somebody to strangle him!
Dr Baskin had already pulled ahead with the two dolphins. She was almost as fast a swimmer as Tom Orley, and none of the other five humans aboard could keep up when she hurried. Dennie turned to D’Anite. “Tell me about it!”
Emerson quickly summarized the story Brookida had told—of a killer weed, of a burning, falling star cruiser, and of the savage waves that followed its crash, setting off a desperate cycle of rescue fever.
Dennie was stunned by the tale, especially young Toshio’s role. That didn’t sound like Toshio Iwashika at all. He had been the one person aboard Streaker who seemed younger and lonelier than she. She liked the middie, of course, and hoped he hadn’t lost his life trying to be a hero.
Emerson then told her the most recent rumors—about an island rescue during a midnight storm, and aboriginal tool users. This time Dennie stopped in midstroke. “Abos? You’re sure? Native pre-sentients?” She tread water, staring at the black engineer.
They were now only ten meters from a great open hatch at the bow