humans.
Dennie looked about the squeaking, clicking mob. Shouldn’t Tom Orley be here? He and Hannes and Tsh’t were in on the rescue. I’ve got to talk to him sometime soon!
Toshio looked like a very tired young man. Just out of decon, he slowly peeled off his drysuit while speaking with Creideiki. Soon he floated naked but for a facemask. Dabs of synthetic skin coated his hands and throat and face. Keepiru drifted nearby. The exhausted dolphin wore a breather, probably under physician’s orders.
Suddenly the spectators blocking Dennie’s view began to spin about and dart away in all directions.
* … bands of idle gawkers—
cease their vain eavesdropping!
* Lest the nets of Iki find them—
for their lack of work and purpose!
The sudden cetacean dispersal buffetted Dennie and Emerson; in moments the crowd had thinned.
Creideiki’s voice pursued the fleeing spacers. “All is done here. Think clear thoughts and do your jobs!”
A dozen fen remained, outlock personnel and the captain’s aides. Creideiki turned to Toshio. “Go on then, little shark-biter, finish your story.”
The boy blushed, nonplussed by the honorific. He forced his heavy eyelids open and tried to maintain a semblance of standard posture in the drifting current.
“Uh, that’s about it, sir. I’ve told you everything Mr. Orley and Tsh’t told me about their plans. If the ET wreck looks usable, they’ll send a sled back for help. If not, they’ll return with whatever they’ve salvaged as quickly as possible.”
Creideiki made small, slow circles with his lower jaw. “A hazardousss gamble,” he commented. “They’ll not reach the hulk for a day, at least. More days, still, will pass without contact …”
Bubbles rose from his blowmouth.
“Very well, then. You shall rest, then join me for supper. I’m afraid your reward for saving Hikahi, and possibly all our lives, shall be an interrogation worse than you’d receive from our enemies.”
Toshio smiled tiredly.
“I understand, sir. I’ll happily let you wring me of info so long as I can eat first … and get dry for a while!”
“Done. Until then!” The captain nodded and turned to go.
Dennie was about to shout to Creideiki when someone else called out first.
“Captain, please! May I have a word?”
The voice was musical, the speaker a large male dolphin with the mottled gray coloration of a Stenos sub-breed. He wore civilian harness, without the bulky racks or heavy manipulator arms carried by the regular crew. Dennie cringed behind Emerson D’Anite. She hadn’t noticed Sah’ot in the crowd until he spoke.
“Before you go, sir,” the dolphin fluted, quite casual. “I must asssk leave to visit that island where Hikahi was stranded.”
With a tail-flick Creideiki arched bottom side up to regard the speaker, skeptically. “Talker-to-races, this is not a fishbrew bar, this island, where poetry can buy back an error. Why venture now courage you never before displayed?”
Despite her dislike of the civilian specialist, Dennie felt sympathy. Sah’ot’s behavior at the derelict fleet, refusing to go with the doomed survey party, had not been admirable. But he had been proven right. The captain’s gig and ten crew had been lost, along with Streaker’s former second in command.
All the sacrifice had gained them was a three-meter-long tube of some strange metal, thoroughly pitted by ages of micrometeorite impacts, recovered personally by Tom Orley. Gillian Baskin had taken over the sealed relic, and to Dennie’s knowledge nobody else had seen it since. It hardly seemed worth the loss they had suffered.
“Captain,” Sah’ot answered, “Thomas Orley has gone on to investigate the wrecked warship, but the island still concerns us.”
No fair! Dennie had been ready to do this! It was to be an act of professionalism—of assertion, to speak out and demand.…
“Honestly, Captain,” Sah’ot went on, “after our duty to escape this trap, and serve the clan of Earth species, what urgent responsibility has fallen upon uss?”
Creideiki obviously wanted to chew Sah’ot’s dorsal fin for baiting him like this. Also, obviously, Sah’ot had hit him with a double harpoon … lacing the word “duty” into a riddle. The captain thrashed his tail, giving out a low series of broad-band sonar clicks, like a watch ticking. His eyes were recessed and dark.
Dennie couldn’t wait for the captain to figure the puzzle, or slap Sah’ot into a cell.
“The abos!” she shouted.
Creideiki turned. Dennie blushed as she felt his field of analytic sound sweep over her. She knew the waves penetrated her very viscera, revealing everything down to her breakfast. Creideiki frightened her. She felt far from being patron to the powerful, involute mind behind that broad forehead.
The captain whirled back