CHAPTER ONE

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portraye

in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people i

incidents is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 1992 by Bill Fawcett and Associates

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book >

portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471

ISBN: 0-671-72129-1

Cover art by Stephen Hickman

First printing, August 1992
Second printing, April 1994

Distributed by Paramount Publishing
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

Printed in die United States of America

The ruby light on the corn unit was blinking when
Hypatia Cade emerged from beneath the tutor's hood,
with quadratic equations dancing before her seven-
year-old eyes. Not the steady blink that meant a
recorded message, nor the triple-beat that meant Mum
or Dad had left her a note, but the double blink with a
pause between each pair that meant there was some-
one Upstairs, waiting for her to open the channel.

Someone Upstairs meant an unscheduled ship —
Ha knew very well when all the scheduled visits were;
they were on the family calendar and were the first
things reported by the AI when they all had breakfast
That made it Important for her to answer, quickly, and
not take the time to suit up and run to the dig for Mum
or Dad. It must not have been an emergency, though,
or the AI would have interrupted her lesson.

She rubbed her eyes to rid them of the dancing vari-
ables, and pushed her stool over to the corn-console so
she could reach all the touch-pads when she stood on
it. She would never have been able to reach things sit-
ting in a chair, of course. With brisk efficiency that
someone three times her age might have envied, she
cleared the board, warmed up the relay, and opened
the line.

'Exploratory Team Cee-One-Two-One," she enun-
oated carefully, for the microphone was old, and often
'ost anything not spoken clearly. "Exploratory Team
^ee-One-Two-One, receiving. Come in, please. Over."

She counted out the four-second lag to orbit and

2	Anne McCaffrey 6? Mercedes Lackey

back, nervously. One-hypotenuse, Two-hypotenuse, Three-
hypotenuse, Four-hypotenuse. Who could it be? They
didn't get unscheduled ships very often, and it meant
bad news as often as not. Planet pirates, plague, or
slavers. Trouble with some of the colony-planets. Or
worse — artifact thieves in the area. A tiny dig like this
one was all too vulnerable to a hit-and-run raid. Of
course, digs on the Salomon-Kildaire Entities rarely
yielded anything a collector would lust after, but would
thieves know that? Tia had her orders if raiders came
and she was alone — to duck down the hidden escape
tunnel that would blow the dome; to run to the dark lit-
tle hidey away from the dig that was the first thing
Mum and Dad put in once the dome was up....

"This is courier TM Three-Seventy. Tia, dearest, is
that you? Don't worry, love, we have a non-urgent mes-
sage run and you're on the way, so we brought you
your packets early. Over." The rich, contralto voice was
a bit flattened by the poor speaker, but still welcome
and familiar, Tia jumped up and down a bit on her

stool in excitement.

"Moira! Yes, yes, it's me! But — " She frowned a litde.
The last time Moira had been here, her designation had
been CM, not TM. "Moira, what happened to Charlie?"
Her seven-year-old voice took on the half-scolding tones
of someone much older. "Moira, did you scare away
another brawn? Shame on you! Remember what they told
you when you kicked Ari out your airlock! Uh—over."

Four seconds; an eternity. "I didn't scare him away,
darling," Moira replied, though Tia thought she

sounded just a litde guilty. "He decided to get married,

raise a brood of his own, and settle down as a dirtsider.

Don't worry, this will be the last one, I'm sure of it.

Tomas and I get along famously. Over."

"That's what you said about Charlie," Tia reminded

her darkly. "And about Ari, and Lilian, and Jules,

and — "

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED	3

She was still reciting names when Moira interrupted
her. "Turn on the landing beacon, Tia, please. We can
talk when I'm not burning fuel in orbital adjustments."
Her voice turned a little bit sly. "Besides, I brought you
a birthday present. That's why I couldn't miss stopping
here. Over."

As if a birthday present was going to distract her
from the litany of Moira's foiled attempts to settle on a
brawn!

Well — maybe just a little.

She turned on the beacon, then feeling a little smug,
activated the rest of the landing sequence, bringing up
the pad lights and guidance monitors, then hooking in
the AI and letting it know it needed to talk to Moira's
navigational system. She hadn't known how to do all
that, the last time Moira was here. Moira'd had to set
down with no help at all.

She leaned forward for the benefit of the mike. "All
clear and ready to engage landing sequence, Moira.
Uh — what did you bring me? Over,"

"Oh, you bright litde penny!" Moira exclaimed, her
voice brimming with delight. "You've got the whole
system up! You have been learning things since I was
here last! Thank you, dear—and you'll find out what I
brought when I get down there. Over and out."

Oh well, she had tried. She jumped down from her
stool, letting the AI that ran the house and external sys-
tems take over the job of bringing the brainship in. Or
rather, giving the brainship the information she
needed to bring herself in; Moira never handed over
her helm to anyone if she had a choice in the matter.
That was part of the problem she'd had with keeping
brawns. She didn't trust them at the helm, and let them
know that. Ari, in particular, had been less than
amused with her attitude and had actually tried to dis-
able her helm controls to prove he could pilot as well as
she.

4	AmwMcCaffrey&Mercedes Lackey

Now, the next decision: should she suit up and fetch
Mum and Dad? It was no use trying to get them on the
com; they probably had their suit-speakers off. Even
though they weren't supposed to do that And this wasn't
an emergency; they would be decidedly annoyed if she
buzzed in on them, and they found out it was just an
unscheduled social call from a courier ship, even if it
was Moira. They might be more than annoyed if they
were in the middle of something important, like
documenting a find or running an age-assay, and she
joggled their elbows.

Moira didn't say it was important She wouldn't have
talked about errant brawns and birthday presents if
what she carried was really, really earth-shaking.

Tia glanced at the clock; it wasn't more than a half
hour until lunch break. If there was one thing that Pota
Andropolous-Cade (Doctor of Science in Bio-Foren-
sics, Doctor of Xenology, Doctor of Archeology), and
her husband Braddon Maartens-Cade (Doctor of
Science in Geology, Doctor of Physics in Cosmology,
Associate  Degree  in Archeology,  and  licensed
Astrogator) had in common — besides daughter
Hypatia and their enduring, if absent-minded love for
each other — it was punctuality. At precisely oh-seven-
hundred every "morning," no matter where they
were, the Cades had breakfast together. At precisely
twelve-hundred, they arrived at the dome for lunch
together. The AI saw that Hypatia had a snack at six-
teen-hundred. And at precisely nineteen-hundred, the
Cades returned from the dig for dinner together.

So in thirty minutes, precisely, Pota and Braddon
would be here. Moira couldn't possibly land in less
than twenty minutes. The visitor — or visitors; there
was no telling if there was someone on board besides
the brawn, the yet-unmet Tomas — would not have
long to wait.

She trotted around the living room of the dome;

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED	5

picking up her books and puzzles, straightening the
pillows on the sofa, turning on lights and the holo-
scape of waving blue trees by a green lagoon on
Mycon, where her parents had met. She told the
kitchen to start coffee, overriding the lunch program to
instruct it to make selection V-l, a setup program
Braddon had logged for her for munchies for visitors.
She decided on music on her own; theArkenstone Suzte,
a lively synthesizer piece she thought matched the
holo-mural.

There wasn't much else to do, so she sat down and
waited — something she had learned how to do very
early. She thought she did it very well, actually. There
had certainly been enough of it in her life. The lot of an
archeologists' child was full of waiting, usually alone,
and required her to be mosdy self-sufficient.

She had never had playmates or been around very
many children of her own age. Usually Mum and Dad
were alone on a dig, for they specialized in Class One
Evaluation sites; when they weren't, it was usually on a
Class Two dig, Exploratory. Never a Class Three
Excavation dig, with hundreds of people and their
families. It wasn't often that the other scientists her
parents' age on a Class Two dig had children younger
than their teens. And even those were usually away
somewhere at school.

She knew that other people thought that the Cades
were eccentric for bringing their daughter with them
on every dig — especially so young a child. Most
parents with a remote job to do left their offspring with
relatives or sent them to boarding schools. Tia listened
to the adults around her, who usually spoke as if she
couldn't understand what they were talking about She
learned a great deal that way; probably more even than
her Mum and Dad suspected.

One of the things she overheard — quite frequently,
in fact — was that she seemed like something of an

6	Anne McCaffrey 6? Mercedes Lackey

afterthought. Or perhaps an "accident" — she'd over-
heard that before, too.

She knew very well what was meant by the "after-
thought or accident" comment. The last time someone
had said that, she'd decided that she'd heard it often
enough.

It had been at a reception, following the reading of
several scientific papers. She'd marched straight up to
the lady in question and had informed her solemnly that
she, Tia, had been planned very carefully, thank you.
That Braddon and Pota had determined that their
careers would be secure just about when Pota's biological
clock had the last few seconds on it, and that was when
they would have one, singular, female child. Herself.
Hypatia. Planned from the beginning. From the
leave-time to give birth to the way she had been brought
on each assignment; from the pressure-bubble glove-
box that had served as her cradle until she could crawl, to
the pressure-tent that became a crib, to the kind of AI
that would best perform the dual functions of tutor and
guardian.

The lady in question, red-faced, hadn't known what
to say. Her escort had tried to laugh it away, telling her
that the "child" was just parroting what she'd over-
heard and couldn't possibly understand any of it.

Whereupon Tia, well-versed in the ethnological
habits — including courtship and mating — of four
separate sapient species, including homo sap., had
proceeded to prove that he was wrong.

Then, while the escort was still spluttering, she had
turned back to the original offender and informed
her, with earnest sincerity, that she had better think
about having her children soon, too, since it was ob-
vious that she couldn't have much more time before
menopause.

Tia had, quite literally, silenced that section of the
room. When reproached later for her behavior by the

THESHIPWHOSEARCHED	7

host of the party, Tia had been completely unrepentant
"She was being rude and nasty," Tia had said. When the
host protested that the remark hadn't been meant for
her, Tia had replied, "Then she shouldn't have said it so
loudly that everyone else laughed. And besides," she had
continued with inexorable logic, "being rudeobout some-
one is worse than being rude to them."

Braddon, summoned to deal with his erring
daughter, had shrugged casually and said only, "I
warned you. And you didn't believe me."

Though exacdy what it was Dad had warned Doctor
Julius about, Tia never discovered.

The remarks about being "unplanned" or an "acci-
dent" stopped, at least in her presence — but people
still seemed concerned that she was "too precocious,"
and that she had no one of her own age to socialize
with.

But the fact was that Tia simply didn't care that she
had no other children to play with. She had the best
lessons in the known universe, via the database; she
had the AI to talk to. She had plenty of things to play
with and lots of freedom to do what she wanted once
lessons were done. And most of all, she had Mum and
Dad, who spent hours more with her than most people
spent with their children. She knew that, because
both the statistics in the books she had read on child-
care and the Socrates, the AI that traveled with them
everywhere, told her so. They were never boring,
and they always talked to her as if she was grown up.
If she didn't understand something, all she had to do
was tell them and they would backtrack and explain
until she did. When they weren't doing something
that meant they needed all their concentration, they
encouraged her to come out to the digs with them
when her lessons were over. She hadn't ever heard of
too many children who got to be with their parents at
work.

8	Arme McCaffrey & Mercedes Lackey

If anything, sometimes Mum and Dad explained a
little too much. She distincdy remembered the time that
she started asking "Why?" to everything. Socrates told
her that "Why?" was a stage all children went through
— mostly to get attention. But Pota and Braddon had
taken her literally....

The AI told her not long ago that her "Why?" period
might have been the shortest on record — because
Mum and Dad answered every "Why?" in detail. And
made sure she understood, so that she wouldn't ask
that particular "Why?" again.

After a month, "Why?" wasn't fun anymore, and she
went on to other things.

She really didn't miss other children at all. Most of
the time when she'd encountered them, it had been
with the wary feeling of an anthropologist approach-
ing a new and potentially dangerous species. The
feeling seemed to be mutual. And so for, other children
had proven to be rather boring creatures. Their inter-
ests and their worlds were very narrow, their
vocabulary a fraction of Tia's. Most of them hadn't the
faintest idea of how to play chess, for instance.

Mum had a story she told at parties about how Tia, at
the age of two, had stunned an overly effusive profes-
sorial spouse into absolute silence. There had been a
chess set, a lovely antique, up on one of the tables just
out of Tia's reach. She had stared longingly at it for
nearly half an hour before the lady noticed what she
was looking at

Tia remembered that incident quite well, too. The
lady had picked up an intricately carved knight and
waggled it at her. "See the horsie?" she had gushed.
"Isn't it a pretty horsie?"

Tia's sense of fitness had been outraged — and that
wasn't all. Her intelligence had been insulted, and she
was very well aware of it

She had stood up, very straight, and looked the lady

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

right in the eye. "Is not a horsie," she had announced,
coldly and clearly. "Is a knight. It moves like the letter L.
And Mum says it is piece most often sacri— sacer—
sacra—"

Mum had come up by then, as she grew red-faced,
trying to remember how to say the word she wanted.
"Sacrificed?" Mum had asked, helpfully. "It means
'given up.' *

Beaming with gratitude, Tia had nodded. "Most
often given up after the pawn." Then she glared at the
lady. "Which is not a little man!"

The lady had retired to a corner and did not emerge
while Tia and her parents were there, although her
Mum's superior had then taken down the set and chal-
lenged Tia to a game. He had won, of course, but she
had at least shown she really knew how to play. He had
been impressed and intrigued, and had taken her out
on the porch to point out various species of birds at the
feeders there.

She couldn't help but think that she affected grown-
ups in only two ways. They were either delighted by
her, or scandalized by her. Moira was among the
"delighted" sort, though most of her brawns hadn't
been. Charlie had, though, which was why she had
thought that he just might be the one to stay with the
brainship. He actually seemed to enjoy the fact that she
could beat him at chess.

She sighed. Probably this new brawn would be of the
other sort.

Not that it really mattered how she affected adults.
She didn't see that many of them, and then it was never
for very long. Though it was important to impress
Mum's and Dad's superiors in a positive sense. She at
least knew that much now.

"Your visitor is at the airlock," said the AI, breaking
in on her thoughts. "His name is Tomas. While he is
cycling, Moira would like you to have me turn on the

10

Anne McCaffrey &? Mercedes Lackey

ground-based radio link so that she can join the con-
versation."

"Go ahead, Socrates," she told the AI. That was the
problem with AIs; if they didn't already have instruc-
tions, you had to tell them to do something before diey
would, where a shellperson would just do it if it made
sense.

"Tomas has your birthday present," Moira said, a
moment later. "I hope you like it/'

"You mean, you hope I like Awn," she replied
shrewdly. "You hope I don't scare him."

"Let's say I use you as a kind of litmus test, all
right?" Moira admitted. "And, darling — Charlie
really did fall in love with a ground-pounder. Even I
could see he wanted to be with her more than he
wanted space." She sighed. "It was really awfully
romantic; you don't see old-style love at first sight
anymore. Michiko is such a charming little thing — I
really can't blame him. And it's partly your fault, dear.
He was so taken with you that all he could talk about
was how he wanted children just like you. Well,
anyway, she persuaded Admin to find him a ground
job, and they traded me Tomas for him, with no fine,
because it wasn't my fault this time."

"It's going to take you forever to buy out diose fines
for bouncing brawns," Tia began, when the inner air-
lock door cycled, and a pressure-suited person came
through, holding a box and his helmet.

Tia frowned at seeing the helmet; he'd taken it off in
the lock, once die pressure was equalized. That wasn't
a good idea, because locks had been known to blow,
especially old ones like the Class One digs had. So
already he was one in the minus column as far as Tia
was concerned. But he had a nice face, with kind eyes,
and that wasn't so bad; a round, tanned face, with curly
black hair and bright brown eyes, and a wide mouth
that didn't have those tense lines at the corners that

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

11

Ari'd had. So that was one in the plus column. He came
out even so far.

"Hello, Tomas," she said, neutrally. "You shouldn't
take your helmet off in the lock, you know — you
should wait until the interior door cycles."

"She's right, Tomas," Moira piped up from the com
console. "These Class One digs always get the last pick
of equipment. All of it is old, and some of it isn't reliable.
Door seals blow all the time."

"It blew last month, when I came in," Tia added
helpfully. "It took Mum hours to install die new seal,
and she's not altogether happy with it." Tomas' eyes
were wide with surprise, and he was clearly taken
aback. He had probably intended to ask her where her
parents were. He had not expected to be greeted by a
lecture on pressure-suit safety.

"Oh," was all he could say. "Ah, thank you. I will
remember that in the future."

"You're welcome," she replied. "Mum and Dad are
at the dig; I'm sorry they weren't here to meet you."

"I ought to make proper introductions," Moira said
from the console. "Tomas, this is Hypatia Cade. Her
mother is Doctor Pota Andropolous-Cade and her
father is Doctor Braddon Maartens-Cade. Tia, this is
Tomas Delacorte-Ibanez."

"I'm very pleased to meet you, Tomas," she replied
with careful formality. "Mum and Dad will be here
i*1 — " she glanced at her wrist-chrono " — ten
minutes. In the meantime, there is fresh coffee, and
may I offer you anything to eat?"

Once again, he was taken aback. "Coffee, please," he
replied after a moment. "If you would be so kind."

She fetched it from the kitchen; by the time she
returned with the cup balanced in one hand and the
refreshments in the other, he had removed his suit.
She had to admit that he did look very handsome in
the skintight ship-suit he wore beneath it. But then,

12

Anne McCaffrey fc? Mercedes Lackey

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

13

all of Moira's brawns had been good-looking. That
was part of the problem; she tended to pick brawns
on the basis of looks first and personality second.

He accepted the coffee and food from her gravely,
and a little warily, for all the world as if he had decided
to treat her as some kind of new, unknown sentient.
She tried not to giggle.

"That is a very unusual name that you were given,"
he said, after an awkward pause. "Hypatia, is it?"

"Yes," she said, "I was named for the first and only
female librarian of the Great Library at Alexandria on
Terra. She was also the last librarian there."

His eyes showed some recognition of the names at
least. So he wasn't completely ignorant of history, the
way Julio had been. "Ah. That would have been when
the Romans burned it, in the time of Cleopatra — "
he began. She interrupted him with a shake of her
head.

"No, the library wasn't destroyed then, not at all, not
even close. It persisted as a famous library into the day
of Constantine," she continued, warming to herj
favorite story, reciting it exactly as Pota had told it to>
her, as it was written in the history database. "It was1
when Hypatia was the librarian that a pack of
unwashed Christian fanatics stormed it — led by some
people who called themselves prophets and holy men
— intending to burn it to the ground because it con-
tained 'pagan books, lies, and heresies.' When Hypatia
tried to stop them, she was murdered, stoned to death,
then trampled."

"Oh," Tomas said weakly, the wind taken quite out of
his sails. He seemed to be searching for something to
say, and evidently chose the first thing that sprang to
mind. "Uh — why did you call them 'unwashed Chris-
tian fanatics?'"

"Because they were," she replied impatiently. "They
were fanatics, and most of them were stylites and other

hermits who made a point of not ever bathing because
taking baths was Roman and pagan and not taking
baths was Christian and mortifying the flesh." She
sniffed. "I suppose it didn't matter to them that it was
also giving them fleas and making them smell, f shan't
evenmention the disease!"

"I don't imagine that ever entered their minds/'
Tbmas said carefully.

"Anyway, I think Hypatia was very brave, but she
could have been a little smarter," Tia concluded. "I
don't think I would have stood there to let them throw
stones at me; I would have run away or locked the door
or something."

Tomas smiled unexpectedly; he had a lovely smile,
very white teeth in his darkly tanned face. "Well, maybe
she didn't have much choice," he said. "I expect that by
the time she realized she wasn't going to be able to stop
those people, it was too late to get away."

Tia nodded, slowly, considering the ancient
Alexandrian garments, how cumbersome they were
and how difficult to run in. "I think you're right," she
agreed. "I would hate to think that the librarian was
stupid."

He laughed at that. "You mean you'd hate to think
that the great lady you were named for was stupid," he
teased. "And I don't blame you. It's much nicer to be
named for someone who was brave and heroic on pur-
pose than someone people think was a hero just
because she was too dense to get out of the way of
trouble!"

Tia had to laugh at that, and right then was when
she decided that she was going to like Tomas. He
hadn't quite known what to make of her at first, but
he'd settled down nicely and was treating her quite like
an intelligent sentient now.

Evidently Moira had decided the same thing, for
when she spoke, her voice sounded much less anxious.

14

Anne McCaffrey & Mercedes Lackey

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

15

"Tomas, aren't you forgetting? You brought Tia her
late birthday present."

"I certainly did forget!" he exclaimed. "I do beg your
pardon, Tia!"

He handed her the box he had brought, and she
controlled herself very well, taking it from him politely,
and not grabbing like a Utde child would have. "Thank
you, Moira," she said to the corn-console. "I don't mind
that it's late — it's kind of like getting my birthday all
over again this way."

"You are just too civilized for your own good, dear,"
Moira giggled. "Well, go ahead, open it!"

She did, carefully undoing the fastenings of the
rather plain box and exposing bright-colored wrap-
ping beneath. The wrapped package within was
odd-shaped, lumpy —

She couldn't stand it any longer; she tore into the
present just like any other child.

"Oh!" she exclaimed when she revealed her prize,
for once caught without a word, holding him up to the
light.

"Do you like it?" Moira asked anxiously. "I mean, I
know you asked, but you grow so fast, I was afraid
you'd have outgrown him by now — "

"I love him!" Tia exclaimed, hugging the bright blue
bear suddenly, reveling in the soft fur against her
cheek. "Oh Moira, I just love him!"

"Well, it was quite a trick to find him, let me tell you,"
Moira replied, her voice sounding very relieved, as
Tomas grinned even wider. "You people move around
so much — I had to find a teddy bear that would take
repeated decontam procedures, one that would stand
up to about anything quarantine could hand out And
it's hard to find bears at all, they seem to have gone
right out of style. You don't mind that he's blue?"

"I like blue," she said happily.

"And you like him fuzzy? That was Tomas' idea."

"Thank you, Tomas," she told the brawn, who
beamed. "He feels wonderful."

"I had a fuzzy dog when I was your age," he replied.
"When Moira told me that you wanted a bear like the
one she had before she went into her shell, I thought
this fellow felt better than the smooth bears."

He leaned down confidentially, and for a moment
Tia was afraid that he was going to be patronizing just
because she'd gone so enthusiastic over the toy.

"I have to tell you the truth, Tia, I really enjoyed dig-
ging into all those toy shops," he whispered. "A lot of
that stuffis wasted on children. I found some logic puz-
zles you just wouldn't believe and a set of magic tricks I
couldn't resist, and I'm afraid I spent far too much
money on spaceship models."

She giggled. "I won't tell if you don't," she replied, in
a conspiratorial whisper.

"Pota and Braddon are in the airlock," Socrates
interrupted. "Shall I order the kitchen to make lunch
now?"

"So why exacdy are you here?" Tomas asked, after all
the initial topics of conversation had been exhausted,
and the subject turned, inevitably, to Pota and
Braddon's work. He gestured at the landscape beyond
the viewport; spectacular mountains, many times taller
than anything found on Terra or any other inhabited
planet. This little ball of rock with a thin skin of dirt was
much like the wilder parts of Mars before it had been
terraformed, and had a sky so dark at midday that the
sun shared the sky with the stars. "I wouldn't expect to
find much of anything out there for an archeologist —
it's the next thing to airless, after all. The scenery is
amazing, but that's no reason to stay here — "

Braddon chuckled, the generous mouth in his
lantern-jawed face widening in a smile, and Tia hid a
gnn. Whether or not Tomas knew it, he had just

16

Amu McCaffrey & Mercedes Lackey

triggered her Bad's lecture mechanism. Fortunately,
Braddon had a gift for lecturing. He was always a
popular speaker whenever he could be tempted to go
to conferences.

"No one expected to find anything on planets like
this one, Tomas," Braddon replied, leaning back
against the supporting cushions of the sofa and tuck-
ing his hands behind his head. "That's why the
Salomon-Kildaire culture is so intriguing. James
Salomon and Tory Kildaire discovered the first build-
ings on the fourth moon of Beta Orianis Three —
and there have never been any verifiable artifacts un-
covered in what you and I would call 'normal'
conditions. Virtually every find has been on airless or
near-airless bodies. Pota and I have excavated over a
dozen sites, doing the Class One studies, and they're
all like this one."

Tomas glanced out the viewport again. "Surely that
implies that they were — "

"Space-going, yes," Pota supplied, nodding her
head so that her gray-brown curls vibrated. "I don't
think there's any doubt of it. Although we've never
found any trace of whatever it was they used to move
them from colony to colony — but that isn't the real
mystery."

Braddon gestured agreement. "The real mystery is
that they never seem to have set up anythmgpermanent.
They never seem to have spent more than a few
decades in any one place. No one knows why they left,
or why they came here in the first place."

Tomas laughed. "They seem to have hopped planets
as often as you two," he said. "Perhaps they were
simply doing what you are doing — excavating an ear-
lier culture and following it across the stars."

Braddon exclaimed in mock horror. "Please!" he
said. "Don't even think that!"

Pota only laughed. "If they had been, we'd have

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

17

found signs of that," she told both of them, tapping
Braddon's knee in playful admonition. "After all, as
bleak as these places are, they preserve things wonder-
fully. If the EsKays had been archeologists, we'd have
found the standard tools of the trade. We break and
wear out brushes and digging tools all the time, and
just leave them in our discard piles. They would have
done the same. No matter how you try to alter it, there
are only so many ways you can make a brush or a
trowel — "

"There would be bad castings," Tia piped up. "You
throw out bad castings all the time, Mum; if they were
archeologists, we'd find a pile of bad castings some-
where."

"Bless me, Tia's right," Braddon nodded. "There
you are, Tomas; irrefutable proof."

"Good enough for me," Tomas replied, good-
naturedly.

"And if that idea was true, there also ought to be
signs of the earlier culture, shouldn't there?" Moira
asked. "And you've never found anything mixed in
with the EsKay artifacts."

"Exactly so," Pota replied, and smiled. "And so,
Tomas, you see how easily an archeologist's theories
can be disposed of."

"Then I'm going to be thankful to be Moira's
partner," Tomas said gracefully, "and leave all the
theorizing to better heads than mine."

After a while, the talk turned to the doings of the
Institute, and both professional and personal news of
Pota and Braddon's friends and rivals. Tia glanced at
the clock again; it was long past time when her parents
would have gone back to the dig — they must have
decided to take the rest of the day off.

But these weren't subjects that interested her, espe-
cially not when the talk went into politics, both of the
Institute and the Central Worlds government. She

18

Arme McCaffrey &? Mercedes Lackey

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

19

took her bear, politely excused herself, and went back
to her room.

She hadn't had a chance to really look him over
when Tomas gave him to her. The last time Moira had
come to visit, she'd told Tia some stories about what
going into the shellperson program had been like, for
unlike most shelipersons, she hadn't been popped into
her shell until she'd been nearly four. Until that time,
there had been some hope that there would have been
a palliative for her particular congenital condition —
premature aging that had caused her body to resemble
a sixty-year-old woman at the age of three. But there
was no cure, and at four, her family finally admitted it.
Into the shell she went, and since there was nothing
wrong with her very fine brain, she soon caught up
and passed by many of her classmates that had been in
their shells since birth.

But one of the toys she'd had — her very favorite, in
fact — had been a stuffed teddy bear. She'd made up
adventures for Ivan the Bearable, sending him in a
troika across the windswept steppes of Novi Gagarin,
and she'd told Tia some of those stories. That, and the
Zen of Pooh book Moira brought her, had solidified a
longing she hadn't anticipated.

For Tia had been entranced by the tales and by Pooh
—and had wanted a bear like Moira's. A simple toy that
did nothing, with no intel-chips; a toy that couldn't talk,
or teach, or walk. Something that was just there to be
hugged and cuddled; something to listen when she
didn't want anything else to overhear....

Moira had promised. Moira didn't forget

Tia closed the door to her room and paged the AI.
"Socrates, would you open a link to Moira in here for
me, please?" she asked. Moira would be perfectly!
capable of following the conversation in the other!
room and still talk to her in here, too.

"Tia, do you really like your present?" Moira asked

anxiously, as soon as the link had been established.

"He's wonderful," Tia answered firmly. "I've even
got a name for him. Theodore Edward Bear."

"Or Ted E. Bear for short?" Moira chuckled. "I like
it. It fits him. He's such a solemn-faced little fellow. One
would think he was a software executive. He looks like
a bear with a great deal on his mind.'*

Tia studied Ted carefully. Moira was right; he was a
sober little bear, with a very studious expression, as if
he was listening very hard to whatever was being said.
His bright blue coloration in no way contradicted the
seriousness of his face, nor did the frivolous little red
shirt he was wearing with the blue and yellow Courier
Service cirde-and-lightning-bolt on the front

"Is there anything going on that I need to know,
Moira?" she asked, giving over her careful examina-
tion of her new friend and hugging him to her chest
instead.

"The results of your last batch of tests seems to have
satisfied all the Psych people out there that you're a
perfecdy well-balanced and self-sufficient girl," Moira
replied, knowing without Tia prompting her just what
was on her mind. "So there's no more talk of making
your parents send you to boarding school."

Tia sighed with relief; that had been a very real
worry the last time Moira had been here. The ship had
left with the results of a battery of tests and psych-
profiles that had taken two days to complete.

MI have to tell you that I added to that," Moira said,
slyly. "I told them what kind of a birthday present you
had asked for from me."

"What did they say?" Tia asked, anxiously. Had they
thought she was being immature—or worse yet, that it
meant she harbored some kind of neurosis?

"Oh, it was funny. They were questioning me on
open com, as if I was some kind of AI that wouldn't
respond to anything that wasn't a direct question, so of

20

Anne McCaffrey &? Mercedes Lackey

course I could hear everything they said. There was
silence for a moment, and then the worst of the lot
finally blurted out, 'Good heavens, the child is normal,'
as if he'd expected you to ask for a Singularity
simulator or something." Moira chuckled.

"I know who it was, too," Tia said shrewdly. "It was
Doctor Phelps-Pittman, wasn't it?"

"Dead on the target, wenchette," Moira replied, still
chuckling. "I still don't think he's forgiven you for beat-
ing him in Batde Chess. By the way, what is your secret?"

"He moves the Queen too often," Tia said absendy.
"I think he likes to watch her hips wiggle when she
walks. It's probably something Freudian."

A splutter of static was all that followed that
pronouncement, as Moira lost control of the circuit
briefly. "My, my," she replied, when she came back on-
line. "You are a litde terror. One might almost suspect
you of having as much control as a shellperson!"

Tia took that in the spirit it was meant, as a compli-
ment.

"I promise not to tell him your weakness," the ship
continued, teasingly.

"What's that?" Tia was surprised; she hadn't known
she had one.

"You hate to see the pawns sacrificed. I think you feel
sorry for the little guys."

Tia digested this in silence for a moment, then
nodded reluctant agreement. "I think you're right,"
she admitted. "It seems as if everybody can beat them
up, and it doesn't seem fair."

"You don't have the problem with an ordinary
holoboard game," Moira observed casually.

"That's because they're just litde blobby pieces on a
holoboard game," Tia explained. "In Battle Chess
they're litde pikemen. And they're cute." She giggled.
"I really love it when Pawn takes Knight and he hits the
Knight with the butt of his pike right in the — "

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

"And that's why you frighten old Phelps-Pittman,"
Moira said severely, though Tia could tell she didn't
mean it. "He keeps thinking you're going to do the
same to him."

"Well, I won't have to see old sour-fece for another
year and a half," she said comfortably." Maybe I can fig-
ure out how to act like a normal girl by then."

"Maybe you can," Moira replied. "I wouldn't put
even that past you. Now, how about a game of Battle
Chess? Ted Bear can referee."

"Of course," she agreed. "You can use the practice.
I'll even spot you a pawn."

"Oh come now! You haven't gotten that much better
since I saw you last." At Tia's continued silence, the
ship asked, tentatively, "Have you?"

Tia shrugged. "Check my record with Socrates," she
suggested.

There was silence as Moira did just that. Then. "Oh,
decom it," she said in mock disgust. "You really are
exasperating. I should demand that you spot me two
pawns."

"Not a chance," Tia replied, ordering the AI to set
up the game, with a Battle Chess field in front of her.
"You're taking advantage enough of a child as it is."

"Taking advantage of a child? Ha!" Moira said ironi-
cally. "You're not a child. I'm beginning to agree with
Phelps-Pittman. You're an eighty-year-old midget in a
little-girl costume."

"Oh, all right," Tia said, good-naturedly. "I won't
give you another pawn, but I will let you have white."

"Good." Moira studied the analog of the board in
her memory, as Tia studied the holoboard in front of
her. "All right, unnatural child. Have at ye!"

Moira and Tomas couldn't stay long; by dinner the
ship had lifted, and the pad was empty — and the Cade
family was back on schedule.

22

Anne McCaffrey &? Mercedes Lackey

Pota and Braddon spent the evening catching up
with the message-packets Moira had brought them —
mostly dispatches from friends at other digs, more
scholarly papers in their various fields, and the latest in
edicts from the Institute. Since Tia knew, thanks to
Moira, that none of those edicts concerned her, she was
free to watch one of the holos Moira had brought for
her entertainment. All carefully screened by the
teachers at the Institute, of course, who oversaw the
education of every child that was on-site with its
parents. But even the teachers didn't see anything
wrong with history holos, provided they were properly
educational and accurate. The fact that most of these
holos had been intended for adult viewing didn't seem
to bother them.

Perhaps it was just as well that the Psychs had no idea
what she was watching. They would probably have
gone into strong hysterics.

Moira had an uncanny ability to pick out the ones
that had good scripts and actors — unlike whoever it
was that picked out most of the holos for the Remote
Educational Department

This one, a four-part series on Alexander the Great,
looked especially good, since it covered only the early
parts of his life, before he became a great leader. Tia felt
a certain kinship for anyone who'd been labeled
"precocious"; and although she already knew that
Alexander's childhood had been far from happy, she
was looking forward to viewing this.

Having Ted beside her to whisper comments to
made it even more fun.

At the end of the first part, even though she was fas-
cinated, she virtuously told Socrates to shut everything
down and went into the main room to say good-night
to her Mum and Dad. The next courier wasn't due for
a while, and she wanted to make her treats last as long
as possible.

THESHIPWHOSEARCHED	23

Both of them were so deep in their readers that she
had to shake their elbows to get them to realize she was
there, but once they came out of their preoccupied
daze, they gave her big hugs and kisses, with no sign of
annoyance at being interrupted.

"I have a really good Mum and Dad," she told Ted
before drifting off to sleep. "I really, really do. Not like
Alexander...."

The next day, it was back to the usual schedule.
Socrates woke her, and she got herself cleaned up and
dressed, leaving Ted to reside on the carefully made
bed until she returned. When she entered the main
room, Pota and Braddon were already there, blinking
sleepily over steaming cups of coffee.

"Hello, darling," Pota greeted her as she fetched her
milk and cereal from the kitchen. "Did you enjoy
Alexander?"

"We-ell, it was interesting," Tia said truthfully. "And I
liked the actors and the story. The costumes and the
horses were really stellar! But his mother and father
were kind of— odd — weren't they?"

Braddon looked up from his coffee with his curly
dark hair over one brown eye, and gave his daughter a
wry grin. "They were certifiable crazy-cases by our
standards, pumpkin," he replied. "But after all, there
wasn't anyone around to apply those standards back
then."

"And no Board of Mental Health to enforce them,"
Pota added, her thin, delicate face creasing with a
puckish smile. "Remember, oh curious little chick, they
were not the ones that had the most influence on
Alexander. That was left to his tutors —Aristotle, of
course, being the main one — and nurses. I think he
succeeded in spite of his parents, personally, and not
because of them."

Tia nodded sagely. "Can I come help at the dig

24

Anm McCajfrey &f Mercedes Lackey

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

25

today?" she asked eagerly. This was one of the best
things about the fact that her parents had picked the
EsKays to specialize in. With next to no atmosphere,
there were no indigent life-forms to worry about. By
the time Tia was five, she had pressure-suit protocol
down pat, and there was no reason why she couldn't
come to the digs, or even wander about within
specified limits on her own. "The biggest sandbox in
the universe," Braddon called it; so long as she stayed
within eye- and earshot, neither of them minded
having her about outside.

"Not today, dearest," Pota said apologetically. "We've
found some glassware, and we're making holos. As
soon as we're done with that, we'll make the castings,
and after that you can come run errands for us." In the
thin atmosphere and chill of the site, castings were
tricky to make; one reason why Pota discarded so many.
But no artifact could be moved without first making a
good casting of it, as well as holos from all possible
angles — too many times the artifacts crumbled to
nothing, despite the most careful handling, once they
were moved.

She sighed; holos and castings meant she couldn't
even come near the site, lest the vibrations she made
walking interfere. "All right," she agreed. "Can I go
outside, though? As long as I stay dose to the airlock?"

"Stay dose to the lock and keep the emergency cart
nearby, and I don't see any reason why you can't play
outside," Pota said after a moment. Then she smiled.
"And how is your dig coming?"

"You mean really, or for pretend?" she asked.

"Pretend, of course," said Braddon. "Pretend is
always more fun than really. That's why we became ar-
cheologists in the first place — because we get to play
pretend for months at a time until we have to be
serious and write papers!"

He gave her a conspiratorial grin, and she giggled.

"We-ell," she said, and drew her face down into a
frown just like Doctor Heinz Marius-Llewellyn, when
he was about to put everyone to sleep. "I've found the
village site of a race of flint-using primitives who were
used as slave labor by the EsKays atyour site."

"Have you!" Pota fell right in with the pretense, as
Braddon nodded seriously. "Well that certainly
explains why we haven't found any servos. They must
have used slaves to do all their manual labor!"

"Yes. And the Flint People worshipped them as gods
from the sky," Tia continued. "That was why they
didn't revolt; all the slave labor was a form of worship.
They'd go back to their village and then they'd try to
make flint tools just like the things that the sky-gods
used. They probably made pottery things, too, but I
haven't found anything but shards."

"Well, pottery doesn't hold up well in conditions like
this," Pota agreed. "It goes brittle very quickly under
the extremes of surface temperature. What have you
got so far?"

"A flint disrupter-pistol, a flint wrist-corn, a flint
flashlight, and some more things," she said solemnly. "I
haven't found any arrowheads or spear-points or
things like that, but that's because there's nothing to
hunt here. They were vegetarians, and they ate noth-
ing but lichen."

Braddon made a face. "Awful. Worse than the food at
the Institute cafeteria! No wonder they didn't survive
— the food probably bored them to death!"

Pota rose and gathered up their plates and cups,
stowing them neatly in the dishwasher. "Well, enjoy
your lessons, pumpkin. We'll see you at lunch."

She smiled, hugged them both goodbye before they
suited up, then went off to the schoolroom.

That afternoon, once lessons were done, she took
down her own pressure-suit from the rack beside the

26

Anne McCaffrey fc? Mercedes Lackey

airlock inner door. Her suit was designed a little dif-
ferently from her parents', with accordion folds at
wrists and elbows, ankles and knees, and at the waist, to
allow for the growth-spurts of a child. This was a brand
new suit, for she had been about to outgrow the last
one just before they went out on this dig. She liked it a
lot better than the old one; the manufacturer of the last
one had some kind of stupid idea that a child's suit
should have cavorting flowers with smiling faces all
over it. She had been ashamed to have anyone but her
parents see her in the awful thing. She thought it made
her look like a little clown.

It had come second-hand from a child on a Class
Three dig — like most of the things that the Cades got.
Evaluation digs simply didn't have that high a priority
when it came to getting anything other than the bare
essentials. But Tia'd had the bright idea when her
birthday came around to ask her parents' superiors at
the Institute for a new pressure-suit And when it came
out that she was imitating her parents, by creating her
own little dig-site, she had so tickled them that they
actually sent her one. Brand new, good for three or
four years at least, and the only difference between it
and a grown-up suit was that hers had extra helmet
lights and a com that couldn't be turned off, a locator-
beacon that was always on, and bright fluorescent
stripes on the helmet and down the arms and legs. A
small price to pay for dignity.

The flowered suit had gone back to the Institute, to
be endured by some other unfortunate child.

And the price to be paid for her relative freedom to
roam was waiting in the airlock. A wagon, child-sized
and modified from the pull-wagon many children had
as toys — but this one had powered crawler-tracks and
was loaded with an auxiliary power unit and air-pack
and full face-mask. If her suit failed, she had been
drilled in what to do so many times she could easily

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

have saved herself when asleep. One, take a deep
breath and pop the helmet. Two, pull the mask on,
making sure the seals around her face were secure.
Three, turn on the air and Four, plug into the APU,
which would keep the suit heat up with the helmet ofE
Then walk — slowly, carefully, to the airlock, towing
the wagon behind. There was no reason why she
should suffer anything worse than a bit of frostbite.

It had never happened. That didn't mean it
wouldn't. Tia had no intention of becoming a tragic
tale in the newsbytes. Tragic tales were all very well in
drama and history, but they were not what one wanted
in real life.

So the wagon went with her, inconvenient as it was.

The filters in this suit were good ones; the last suit
had always smelled a little musty, but the air in this one
was fresh and clean. She trotted over the uneven sur-
face, towing the cart behind, kicking up little puffs of
dust and sand. Everything out here was very sharp-
edged and dear; red and yellow desert, reddish-purple
mountains, dark blue sky. The sun, Sigma Marinara,
hung right above her head, so all the shadows were
tiny pools of dark black at the bases of things. She
hadn't been out to her "site" for several weeks, not
since the last time Mum and Dad had asked her to stay
away. That had been right at the beginning, when they
first got here and uncovered enough to prove it was an
EsKay site. Since that time there had been a couple of
sandstorms, and Tia was a bit apprehensive that her
"dig" had gotten buried. Unlike her parents' dig, she
did not have force-shields protecting her trench from
storms.

But when she reached her site, she discovered to her
amazement that more was uncovered than she had left.
Instead of burying her dig in sand, the storm had
scoured the area clean —

There were several likely-looking lumps at the

28

Anne McCaffrey &? Mercedes Lackey

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

29

farther end of the trench, all fused together into a
bumpy whole. Wonderful! There would be hours of
potential pretend here; freeing the lumps from the
sandy matrix, cleaning them off, figuring out what the
Flint People had been trying to copy....

She took the tools her parents had discarded out of
the wagon; the broken trowel that Braddon had
mended for her, the worn brushes, the blunted probes,
and set to work.

Several hours later, she sat back on her heels arid
looked at her first find, frowning. This wasn't a lump of
flint after all. In fact, it seemed to be some kind of
layered substance, with the layers fused together. Odd,
it looked kind of wadded up. It certainly wasn't any
kind of layered rock she'd ever seen before, and it
didn't match any of the rocks she'd uncovered until
now.	:

She chewed her lower lip in thought and stared at itj;
letting her mind just drift, to see if it could identify whalj
kind of rock it was. It didn't look sedimentary.	]

Actually, it didn't look much like a rock at all....

Not like a rock. What if it isn't a rock?

She blinked, and suddenly knew what it did look
Layers of thin cloth or paper, wadded up, then d
carded.

Finagle! Have I—

She gently — very gently — pried another lump off
the outcropping, and carefully freed it of its gritty coat-
ing. And there was no doubt this time that what she had
was the work of intelligent hands. Under the layer of
half-fused sand and flaking, powdery dust, gleamed a
spot of white porcelain, with the matte edge of a break
showing why it had been discarded.

Oh, decom — I found the garbage dump! 

Or, at least, she had found a little trash heap. 
That was probably it; likely there was just this lump of discard
and no more. But anything the EsKays left behind was
important, and it was equally important to stop digging
now, mark the site in case another sandstorm came up
and capriciously buried it as it had capriciously
uncovered it, and bring some evidence to show Mum
and Dad what she had found.

Except that she didn't have a holo-camera. Or any-
thing to cast with.

Finally she gave up trying to think of what to do.
There was only one thing for it Bring her two finds in-
side and show them. The lump of fabric might not
survive the touch of real air, but the porcelain thing
surely would. Porcelain, unlike glass, was more
resilient to the stresses of repeated temperature
changes and was not likely to go to powder at the first
touch of air.

She went back inside the dome and rummaged
around for a bit before returning with a plastic food
container for the artifacts, and a length of plastic pipe
and the plastic tail from a kite-kit she'd never had a
chance to use. Another well-meant but stupid gift from
someone Dad worked with; someone who never once
thought that on a Mars-type world there weren't very
many opportunities to fly kites....

With the site marked as securely as she could
manage, and the two artifacts sealed into the plastic
tub, she returned to the dome again, waiting
impatiently for her parents to get back.

She had hoped that the seal on the plastic tub would
be good enough to keep the artifacts safely protected
from the air of the dome. She knew as soon as the air-
lock pressurized, though, that her attempt to keep
them safe had failed. Even before she pulled off her
helmet, the external suit-mike picked up die hiss of air
leaking into the container. And when she held the plas-
uc tub up to the light, it was easy enough to see that one
°f the lumps had begun to disintegrate. She pried the

30

Anri£ McCaffiey &? Mercedes Lackey

lid off for a quick peek, and sneezed at the dust The
wadded lump was not going to look like much when
her parents got home.

Decom it, she thought resentfully. That's not fair!

She put it down carefully on the countop; if she
didn't jar it, there might still be enough left when Mum
and Dad got back in that they would at least be able to
tell what it had been.

She stripped out of her suit and sat down to wait. She
tried to read a book, but she just couldn't get interested, j
Mum and Dad were going to be so surprised — and
even better, now the Psychs at the Institute would have
no reason to keep her away from the Class Two site
anymore — because this would surely prove that she
knew what to do when she accidentally found some
thing. The numbers on the clock moved with
agonizing slowness, as she waited for the moment
when they would finally return.

The sky outside the viewport couldn't get much
darker, but the shadows lengthened, and the light
faded. Soon now, soon —

Finally she heard them in the outer lock, and her
heart began to beat faster. Suddenly she was no longer
so certain that she had done the right thing. What if
they were angry that she dissected the first two
artifacts? What if she had done the wrong thing in
moving them?	

The "what ifs" piled up in her head as she waited for
the lock to cycle.

Finally the inner door hissed, and Braddon and Pota
came through, already pulling off their helmets and
continuing a high-speed conversation that must have
begun back at the dig.

" — but the matrix is all wrong for it to be a food*
preparation area — "

" — yes, yes," Pota replied impatiently, " but what
about the integument—"

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

31

"Mum!" Tia said, running up to them and tugging
it her mother's elbow. "I've found something!"
"Hello, pumpkin, that's very nice," her mother

-eplied absently, hugging her, and going right on with
her conversation. Her intense expression showed that
ihe was thinking while she spoke, and her eyes never
wandered from her husband's face — and as for Brad-
ion, the rest of the world simply did not exist.

"Mum!" Tia persisted. "I've found an artifact!"

"In a moment, dear," Pota replied. "But what
about—*

"MUMf'Tia shouted, disobeying every rule of not
interrupting grown-ups in desperation, knowing from
all the signs that she would never get their attention
otherwise. Conversations like this one could go on for
hours. "Fve found an artifact!"

Both her parents stopped their argument in mid-
sentence and stared at her. Silence enveloped the
room; an ominous silence. Tia gulped nervously.

"Tia," Braddon finally said, disapproval creeping
Jito his voice. "Your mother and I are in the middle of a
i'ery important conversation. This is not the time for
pretend."

"Dad, it's not pretend!" she said insistently, pointing
:o her plastic box. "It's not! I found an artifact, and
chere's more — "

Pota raised an eyebrow at her husband and
shrugged. Braddon picked up the box, carelessly, and
Ha winced as the first lump inside visibly disintegrated
more.

HI
i am going to respect your intelligence and

integrity enough to assume that you think you found an
artuact," Braddon replied, prying the lid from the con-
tainer. "But Tia, you know better than to — "

He glanced down inside — and his eyebrows arched
upward in the greatest show of surprise that Tia had

-ver seen him make.

32

Anne McCaffrey &? Mercedes Lackey

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

Pota had hugged her. "What I mean, pumpkin, is
that there is a very good chance that we'll stay on here

— as the dig supervisors! An instant promotion from
Class One supervisor to Class Three supervisor!
There'll be better equipment, a better dome to live in

— you'll have some playmates — couriers will be by
every week instead of every few months — not to men-
tion the raises in pay and status! All the papers on this
site will go out under our names! And all because you
were my clever, bright, careful little girl, who knew
what she saw and knew when to stop playing!"

"Mum and Dad are really, really happy," she told
Ted, thinking about the glow of joy that had been on
both their faces when they finished the expensive link
to the nearest Institute supervisor. "I think we did a
good thing. I think maybe you brought us luck, Ted."
She yawned. "Except about the other kids coming. But
we don't have to play with them if we don't want to, do
we?"

Ted agreed silendy, and she hugged him again. "I'd
rather talk to you, anyway," she told him. "You never
say anything dumb. Dad says that if you can't say some-
thing intelligent, you shouldn't say anything; and
Mum says that people who know when to shut up are
the smartest people of all, so I guess you must be pretty
smart Right?"

But she never got a chance to find out if Ted agreed
with that statement, because at that point she fell right
asleep.

Over the course of the next few days, it became evi-
dent that this was not just an ordinary garbage dump;
Jfiis was one containing scientific or medical debris.
Jnat raised the status of the site from "important" to
priceless," and Pota and Braddon took to spending
every waking moment either at the site or preserving
and examining their finds, making copious notes, and

"I told you," Tia could not resist saying, triumphantly.

" — so they took the big lights out to the trench, and
the extra field-generators," she told Ted E. Bear after
she'd been put to bed for the night. "They were out
there for hours, and they let me wait up to hear what it
was. And it was, I did find a garbage dump! A big one,
too! Mum made a special call to the Institute, 'cause this
is the first really big EsKay dump anybody's ever
found."

She hugged Ted closer, basking in the warmth a
Pota's praise, a warmth that still lingered and made he
fed happy right down to her toes. "You did everythinj
exactly right with the equipment you had," Pota hai
told her. "I've had undergraduates that didn't do a
well as you did, pumpkin! You remember what I tot
you, when you asked me about why I wanted to fmi
garbage?"

"That we learn more from sentients' garbage thai
from anything other than their literature," she''
recited dutifully.

"Well," Pota had replied, sitting on the edge of he
bed and touching her nose with one finger, playfull]
"You, my curious little chick, have just upgraded thi
site from a Class One to a Class Three with four houl
of work! That's more than Braddon and I haveevi
done!"

"Does that mean that we'll be leaving?" she'd askej
in confusion.

"Eventually," Pota told her, a certain gloating glee ii
her voice. "But it takes time to put together a Clas
Three team, and we happen to be right here. You:
father and I will be making gigabytes of important dis
coveries before the team gets here to replace us. An<
with that much already invested — they may no
replace us!"

Tia had shaken her head, confused.

any number of speculations. They hardly ever saw Tia
anymore; they had changed their schedule so that they
were awake long before she was and came in long after
she went to bed.

Pota apologized—via a holo that she had left to play
for Tia as soon as she came in to breakfast this morning.

"Pumpkin," her image said, while Tia sipped her
juice. "I hope you can understand why we're doing
this. The more we find out before the team gets sent
out, the more we make ourselves essential to the dig,
the better our chances for that promotion." Pota's
image ran a hand through her hair; to Tia's critical
eyes, she looked very tired, and a bit frazzled, but fairly
satisfied. "It won't be more than a few weeks, I promise.
Then things will go back to normal. Better than nor-
mal, in fact. I promise that we'll have a Family Day
before the team gets here, all right? So start thinking
what you'd like to do."

Well, that would be stellar! Tia knew exactly what she
wanted to do — she wanted to go out to the mountains
on die big sled, and she wanted to drive it herself on the
way.	'I

"So forgive us, all right? We don't love you any Iess
and we think about you all the time, and we miss you
like anything." Pota blew a kiss toward the camera.
know you can take care of yourself; in fact, we're count-
ing on that. You're making a big difference to us. I was
you to know that. Love you, baby."

Tia finished her juice as the holo flickered out, and
certain temptation raised its head. This could be
really unique opportunity to play hooky, just a little bit
Mum and Dad were not going to be checking the tutor
to see how her lessons were going — and the Institute
Psychs wouldn't care; they thought she was to
advanced for her age anyway. She could even raid
library for the holos she wasn't precisely suppos
watch....

"Oh, Finagle," she said, regretfully, after a moment
It might be fun — but it would be gttilty fun. And
besides, sooner or later Mum and Dad would find out
what she'd done, andpmgf there would go the Family
Day and probably a lot of other privileges. She weighed
the immediate pleasure of being lazy and watching for-
bidden holos against the future pleasure of being able
to pilot the sled up the mountains, and the latter out-
ranked the former. Piloting the sled was the closest she
would get to piloting a ship, and she wouldn't be able to
do that for years and years and years yet.

And if she fell on her nose now, right when Mum and
Dad trusted her most—they'd probably restrict her to
the dome for ever and ever.

"Not worth it," she sighed, jumping down from her
stool. She frowned as she noticed that the pins-and-
needles feeling in her toes still hadn't gone away. It had
been there when she woke up this morning. It had
been there yesterday too, and the day before, but by
breakfast it had worn off.

Well, it didn't bother her that much, and it wouldn't
take her mind offher Latin lesson. Too bad, too.

"Boring language," she muttered. "Ick, ack, ock!"

Well, the sooner she got it over with, the better off
she'd be, and she could go back to nice logical quadratics.

The pins-and-needles feeling hadn't worn oflfby after-
noon, and although she felt all right, she decided that
since Mum and Dad were trusting her to do everything
right, she probably ought to talk to the AI about it

Socrates, engage Medic Mode, please," she said, sit-

*"£ d?wn reluctantly in the tiny medic station. She
"wwy didn't like being in the medic-station; it smelled of
^^nfectant and felt like being in a too-small pressure
^t. It was just about the size of a tiny lav, but some-

*™ng about it made \tfeel smaller. Maybe because it was
* inside. And of course, since it had been made for

36

Arme McCaffrey fcf Mercedes Lackey

adults, the proportions were all wrong for her. In order
to reach hand-plates she had to scoot to the edge of the
seat, and in order to reach foot-plates she had to get
right off the seat entirely. The screen in front of her lit
up with the smiling holo of someone that was supposed
to be a doctor. Privately, she doubted that the original
had ever been any closer to medicine than wearing the
jumpsuit. He just looked too — polished. Too trust-
worthy, too handsome, too competent. Any time there
was anything official she had to interface with that
seemed to scream trust me at her, she immediately dis-
trusted it and went very wary. Probably the original for
this holo had been an actor. Maybe he made adults feel
calm, but he made her think about the Psychs and their
too-hearty greetings, their nosy questions.

"Well, Tia," said the AI's voice — changed to that of
the "doctor." "What brings you here?"

"My toes feel like they're asleep," she said dutifully.
"They kind of tingle."

"Is that all?" the "doctor" asked, after a moment for
the AI to access his library of symptoms. "Are they
colder than normal? Put your hand on the hand-plate,
and your foot on the foot-plate, Tia."

She obeyed, feeling very like a contortionist
"Well, the circulation seems to be fine," the "doctor"
said, after the AI had a chance to read temperature and
blood pressure, both of which appeared in the upper
right-hand corner of the screen. "Have you any other
symptoms?"

"No," she replied. "Not really." The "doctor" froze
for a moment, as the AI analyzed all the other readings
it had taken from her during the past few days — what
she'd eaten and how much, what she'd done, her sleep-
patterns.

The "doctor" unfroze. "Sometimes when children
start growing very fast, they get odd sensations in their
bodies," the AI said. "A long time ago, those were called

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

37

'growing pains.' Now we know it's because sometimes
different kinds of tissue grow at different rates. I think
that's probably what your problem is, Tia, and I don't
think you need to worry about it. I'll prescribe some
vitamin supplements for you, and in a few days you
should be just fine."

"Thank you," she said politely, and made her escape,
relieved to have gotten off so lightly.

And in a few days, the pins-and-
go away, and she diought no more about it. Thought
no more, that is, until she went outside to her new
"dig" and did something she hadn't done in a year —
she fell down. Well, she didn't exactly fall; she thought
she'd sidestepped a big rock, but she hadn't. She
rammed her toes right into it and went heavily to her
knees.

The suit was intact, she discovered to her relief —
and she was quite ready to get up and keep going, until
she realized that her foot didn't hurt

And it should have, if she'd rammed it against the
outcropping hard enough to throw her to the ground.

So instead of going on, she went back to the dome
and pealed off suit and shoe and sock — and found her
foot was completely numb, but black-and-blue where
she had slammed it into the unyielding stone.

When she prodded it experimentally, she discovered
that her whole foot was numb, from the toes back to the
arch. She peeled off her other shoe and sock, and
found that her left foot was as numb as her right

"Decom it," she muttered. This surely meant
another check-in with the medic.

Once again she climbed into the claustrophobic little
closet at the back of the dome and called up the
"doctor."

"Still got pins-and-needles, Tia?" he said cheerfully,
as she wriggled on the hard seat

38

Anne McCaffrey ££ Mercedes Lackey

"No," she replied, "But I've mashed my foot some-
thing awful. It's all black-and-blue."

"Put it on the foot-plate, and I'll scan it," the "doctor"
replied. "I promise, it won't hurt a bit."

Of course it won't, it doesn't hurt now, she thought
resentfully, but did as she was told.

"Well, no bones broken, but you certainly did bruise
it!" the "doctor" said after a moment. Then he added
archly, "What were you doing, kicking the tutor?"

"No," she muttered. She really hated it when the Al
program made it get patronizing. "I stubbed it on a
rock, outside."

"Does it hurt?" the "doctor" continued, oblivious to
her resentment.

"No," she said shortly. "It's all numb."

"Well, if it does, I've authorized your bathroom to
give you some pills," the "doctor" said with cloying
cheer. 'Just go right ahead and take them if you need
them—you know how to get them."

The screen shut down before she had a chance to say
anything else. I guess it isn't anything to worry about, she
decided. The Al would have said something otherwise. It'll
probably go away.

But it didn't go away, although the bruises healed.
Before long she had other bruises, and the numbness
of her feet extended to her ankles. But she told herself
that the Al had said it would go away, eventually — and
anyway, this wasn't so bad, at least when she mashed
herself it didn't hurt.

She continued to play at her own little excavation,
the new one — which she had decided was a grave-site.
The primitives burned their dead though, and only
buried the ashes with their flint-replicas of the sky-
gods' wonderful things — hoping that the dearly
departed would be reincarnated as sky-gods and
return in wealth and triumph....

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

39

It wasn't as much fun though, without Mum and
Dad to talk to; and she was getting kind of tired of the
way she kept tripping and falling over the uneven
ground at the new "site." She hadn't damaged her new
suit yet, but there were sharp rocks that could rip holes
even in the tough suit fabric—and if her suit was torn,
there would go the promised Family Day.

So, finally, she gave up on it and spent her after-
noons inside.

A few nights later, Pota peeked in her room to see if
she was sail awake.

"I wanted you to know we were still flesh-and-blood
and not holos, pumpkin," her mum said, sitting down
on the side of her bed. "How are your excavations
coming?"

Tia shook her head. "I kept tripping on things, and I
didn't want to tear my suit," she explained. "I think
that the Flint People must have put a curse on their
grave-site. I don't think I should dig there anymore."

Pota chuckled, hugged her, and said, "That could
very well be, dear. It never pays to underestimate the
power of religion. When the others arrive we'll
research their religion and take the curse on; all right?"

"Okay," she replied. She wondered for a moment if
she should mention her feet—

But Pota kissed her and whisked out the door before
she could make up her mind.

Nothing more happened for several days, and she
got used to having numb feet. If she was careful to
watch where she stepped, and careful never to go
barefoot, there really wasn't anything to worry about.
And the Al had said it was something that happened to
other children.

Besides, now Mum and Dad were really finding
important things. In a quick breakfast-holo, a tired but
excited Braddon said that what they were uncovering
now might mean a whole lot more than just a

40

Arme McCaffrey Esf Mercedes Lackey

promotion. It might mean the establishment of a
fieldwide reputation.

Just what that meant, exactly, Tia wasn't certain—but
there was no doubt that it must be important or Braddon
wouldn't have been so excited about it. So she decided
that whatever was wrong with her could wait Itwouldn't
be long now, and once Mum and Dad weren't involved in
this day-and-night frenzy of activity, she could explain
everything and they would see to it that the medics gave
her the right shot or whatever it was that she needed.

The next morning when she woke up, her fingers
were tingling.

Tia sighed and took her place inside the medic
booth. This was getting very tiresome.

The AI ran her through the standard questions,
which she answered as she had before. "So now you
have that same tingling in your hands as you did in
your feet, is that right?" the "doctor" asked.

"That's right," she said shortly.

"The same tingling that went away?" the "doctor"
persisted.

"Yes," she replied. Should I say something about how it
doesn't tingle anymore, about how now it's numb? But the AI
was continuing.

"Tia, I can't really find anything wrong with you," it
said. "Your circulation is fine, you don't have a fever,
your appetite and weight are fine, you're sleeping
right. But you do seem to have gotten very accident
prone lately." The "doctor" took on a look of concern
covering impatience. "Tia, I know that your parents
are very busy right now, and they don't have time to
talk to you or play with you. Is that what's really wrong?
Are you angry with your parents for leaving you alone
so much? Would you like to talk to a Counselor?"

"No!" she snapped. The idea! The stupid AI actually
thought she was making this up to get attention!

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

41

"Well, you simply don't have any other symptoms,"
the "doctor" said, none too gently. "This hasn't got to
the point where I'd have to insist that you talk to a
Counselor, but really, without anything else to go on, I
can't suggest anything else except that this is a phase
you'll grow out of."

"This hasn't got to the point where Fd have to insist that you
talk to a Counselor." Those were dangerous words. The
AI's "Counselor" mode was only good for so much —
and every single thing she said and did would be
recorded the moment that she started "Counseling."
Then all the Psychs back at the Institute would be sent
the recordings via compressed-mode databurst — and
they'd be all over them, looking for something wrong
with her that needed Psyching. And if they found any-
thing, anything at all, Mum and Dad would get orders
from the Board of Mental Health that they couldn't
ignore, and she'd be shipped back to a school on the
next courier run.

Oh no. You don't catch me that easy.

"You're right," she said carefully. "But Mum and Dad
trust me to tell you everything that's wrong, so I am."

"All right then." The "doctor's" face lost that stern
look. "So long as you're just being conscientious. Keep
taking those vitamin supplements, Tia, and everything
will be fine."

But everything wasn't fine. Within days, the tingling
had stopped, to be replaced by numbness. Just like her
feet. She began having trouble holding things, and her
lessons took twice as long now, since she couldn't
touch-type anymore and had to watch where her
fingers went.

She completely gave up on doing anything that
required a lot of manual dexterity. Instead, she
watched a lot of holos, even boring ones, and played
a great deal of holo-chess. She read a lot too, from
the screen, so that she could give one-key page-

42

Anne McCaffrty ^Mercedes Lackey

turning commands rather than trying to turn paper
pages herself. The numbness stopped at her wrists,
and for a few days she was so busy getting used to
doing things without feeling her hands, that she
didn't notice that the numbness in her legs had
spread from her ankles to her knees....

Now she was afraid to go to die AI "doctor" program,
knowing that it would put her in for Counseling. She
tried looking things up herself in the database, but knew
diat she was going to have to be very sneaky to avoid trig-
gering flags in the AI. As the numbness stopped at die
knees, then began to spread up her arms, she kept celling
herself that it wouldn't, couldn't be much longer now.
Soon Mum and Dad would be done, and they would
know she wasn't making this up to get attention. Soon
she would be able to tell them herself, and diey'd make
the stupid medic work right. Soon.

She woke up, as usual, to hands and feet that acted
like wooden blocks at the ends of her limbs. She got a
shower — easy enough, since the controls were push-
button, then struggled into her clothing by wriggling
and using teeth and fingers that didn't really want to
move. She didn't bother too much with hair and teeth,
it was just too hard. Shoving her feet into slippers, since
she hadn't been able to tie her shoes for the past couple
of days, she stumped out into the main room of the
dome —

Only to find Pota and Braddon waiting there for her,
smiling over their coffee.

"Surprise!" Pota said cheerfully. "We've done just
about everything we can on our own, and we zipped
the findings off to the Institute last night. Now things
can get back to normal'"

"Oh Mum!" She couldn't help herself, she was so
overwhelmed by relief and joy diat she started to run
across the room to fling herself into their arms —

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

43

Started to. Halfway there, she tripped, as usual, and
went flying through the air, crashing into the table and
spilling the hot coffee all over her arms and legs.

They picked her up, as she babbled apologies about
her clumsiness. She didn't even notice what the coffee
had done to her, didn't even think about it until her
parents' expressions of horror alerted her to the feet
that there were burns and blisters already rising on her
lower arms.

"It doesn't hurt," she said, dazedly, without thinking,
just saying the first thing that came into her mind. "It's
okay, really, I've been kind of numb for a while so it
doesn't hurt, honest—"

Pota and Braddon both froze. Something about
their expressions startled her into silence.

"You don't feel anything?" Pota said, carefully. "No
pain, nodiing at all?"

She shook her head. "My hands and feet were tin-
gling for a while, and then they stopped and went
numb. I thought if I just waited you could take care of it
when you weren't so busy — "

They wouldn't let her say anything else. Within
moments they had established through careful prod-
ding and tests with the end of a sharp probe that the
numb area now ended at mid-thigh and mid-shoulder.

"How long has this been going on?" Braddon asked,
while Pota flew to the AI console to call up the medical
program the adults used.

"Oh, a few weeks," she said vaguely. "Socrates said it
wasn't anything, that I'd grow out of it. Then he acted
like I was making it up, and I didn't want him to get the
Psychs on me. So I figured I would...."

Pota returned at that moment, her mouth set in a
grim line. "You are going straight to bed, pumpkin,"
she said, with what Tia could tell was forced lightness,
"Socrates thinks you have pinched nerves; possibly a
spinal defect that he can't scan for. So you are going to

44

Arme McCaffny fef Mercedes Lackey

bed, and we are calling for a courier to come get you.
All right?"

Braddon and Pota exchanged one of those looks, the
kind Tia couldn't read, and Tia's heart sank. "Okay,"
she sighed with resignation. "I didn't mean to be such a
bother, honest, I didn't—"

Braddon scooped her up in his arms and carried her
off to her room. "Don't even thmk that you're being a
bother," he said fiercely. "We love you, pumpkin. And
we're going to see that you get better as quickly as we
can."

He tucked her into bed, with Ted beside her, and
called up a holo from the almost-forbidden collection.
"Here," he said, kissing her tenderly. "Your Mum is
going to be in here in a minute to put something on
those burns. Then we're going to spend all our time
making you the most disgustingly spoiled litde brat in
known space! What 3101* have to do is lie there and think
really hard about getting better. Is it a deal?"

"Sure, Dad," she replied, managing to find a grin for
him somewhere. "It's a deal."

• CHAPTERTWO

Because Tia was in no danger of dying — and
because there was no craft available to come fetch her
capable of Singularity Drive — the Al-drone that had
been sent to take her to a Central Worlds hospital took
two more weeks to arrive. Two more long, inter-
minable weeks, during which the faces of her Mum
and Dad grew drawn and frightened — and in which
her condition not only did not improve, it deteriorated.

By the end of that two weeks, she was in much worse
shape; she had not only lost all feeling in her limbs, she
had lost use of them as well. The clumsiness that had
begun when she had trouble with buttons and zippers
had turned into paralysis. If she hadn't felt the need to
keep her parents' spirits up, she'd have cried. She
couldn't even hold Ted anymore.

She joked about it to her Mum, pretending that she
had always wanted to be waited on hand and foot She
had to joke about it; although she was terrified, the look
of fear in her parents' eyes drove her own terrors away.
She was determined, absolutely determined, not to let
them know how frightened she was. They were
already scared enough — if she lost her courage, they
might panic.

The time crawled by, as she watched holo after holo
and played endless games of chess against Braddon,
and kept telling herself that once she got to the hospital
everything would be fine. Of course it would be fine.
There wasn't anything that a Central Worlds hospital
couldn't cure. Everyone knew that! Only congenital

46

Amu McCaffrey & Mercedes Lackey

defects couldn't be cured. But she had been fine, right
up until the day this started. It was probably something
stupid.

"Socrates says it has to be pinched nerves," Pota
repeated, for the hundredth time, the day the ship was
due. "Once they get you to the hospital, you'll have to
be really brave, pumpkin. They're probably going to
have to operate on you, and it's probably going to take
several months before you're back to normal — "

She brushed Tia's hair and tied it in back in a neat
tail, the way Tia liked it. "I won't be able to do any les-
sons, then, will I?" she asked, mostly to keep her
mother's mind busy with something trivial. Mwn doesn't
handle reality and real-time very well... Dad doesn't either.
"They're probably going to have me in a cast or some-
thing, and all dopey with pain-pills. I'm going to fall
behind, aren't I?"

"Well," Pota said, with false cheer, "yes, I'm afraid so.
But that will probably make the Psychs all very happy,
you know, they think that you're too far ahead as it is.
But just think — you'll have the whole library at the
hospital to dig into any time you want it!"

That was enough even to divert her for a minute.
The entire library at the hospital — magnitudes bigger
than any library they could carry with them. All the
holos she wanted to watch — and proper reading
screens set up, instead of the jury-rig Dad had put
together —

"They're here — " Braddon called from the outer
room. Pota compressed her lips into a line again and
lifted Tia out of the bed. And for the first time in weeks,
Tia was bundled into her pressure-suit, put inside as if
Pota was dressing a giant doll. Braddon came in to help
in a moment, as she tried to cooperate as much as she
could. She would be going outside again. This time,
though, she probably wouldn't be coming back. Not to
this dome, anyway.

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

47

"Wait!" she called, just before Pota sealed her in.
"Wait, 1 want my bear!" And at the look of doubt her
parents exchanged, she put on the most pleading
expression she could manage. "Please?" She couldn't
stand the idea that she'd be going off to a strange place
with nothing familiar or warm in it Even if she couldn't
hold him, she could still talk to him and feel his fur
against her cheek. "Please ? "

"All right, pumpkin," Pota said, relenting. "I think
there's just room for him in there with you." For-
tunately Ted was very squashable, and Tia herself was
slender. There was room for him in the body of the suit,
and Tia took comfort in the feel of his warm little bulk
against her waist.

She didn't have any time to think of anything else —
for at that moment, two strangers dressed in the white
pressure-suits of CenCom Medical came in. There was
a strange hiss at the back of her air-pack, and the room
went away.

She woke again in a strange white room, dressed in a
white paper gown. The only spot of color in the whole
place was Ted. He was propped beside her, in the crook
of her arm, his head peeking out from beneath the
white blanket

She blinked, trying to orient herself, and the cold
hand of fear damped down on her throat. Where was
she? A hospital room, probably, but where were Mum
and Dad? How did she get here so/orf? What had those
two strangers done to her?

And why wasn't she feeling better? Why couldn't she

feel anything'?

"She's awake," said a voice she didn't recognize. She
turned her head, which was all she could move, to see
someone in another white pressure-suit standing beside
her, anonymous behind a dark faceplate. The red cross
of Medical was on one shoulder, and there was a

48

Arme MeCaffrey &? Mercedes Lackey

name-tag over the breast, but she couldn't read it from
this angle. She couldn't even tell if the person in the suit
was male or female, or even human or humanoid.

Hie faceplate bent over her; she would have shrunk
away if she could, feeling scared in spite of herself—
the plate was so blank, so impersonal. But then she
realized that the person in the suit had bent down so
that she could see the face inside, past the glare of lights
on the plexi surface, and she relaxed a little.

"Hello, Hypatia," said the person — a lady, actually,
a very nice lady from her face. Her voice sounded kind
of tinny, coming through the suit speaker; a little like
Moira's over the ancient com. The comparison made
her feel a little calmer. At least the lady knew her name
and pronounced it right.

"Hello," she said cautiously. "This is the hospital,
isn't it? How come I don't remember the ship?"

"Well, Hypatia — may I call you Tia?" At Tia's nod,
the lady continued. "Tia, our first thought was that you
might have some kind of plague, even though your
parents were all right. The doctor and medic we sent
on the ship decided that it was better to be completely
safe and keep you and your parents in isolation. The
easiest way to do that was to put all three of you in cold
sleep and keep you in your suits until we got you here.
We didn't want to frighten you, so we asked your
parents not to tell you what we were going to do."

Tia digested that. "All right," she said, trying to be
agreeable, since there wasn't anything she could have
done about it anyway. "It probably would have gotten
really boring on the ship. There probably wasn't much
to watch or read, and they would have gotten tired of
playing chess with me."

The lady laughed. "Given that you would have
beaten the pants offboth of them, quite probably," she
agreed, straightening up a little. Now that Tia knew
there was a person behind the faceplate, it didn't seem

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

49

quite so threatening. "Now, we're going to keep you in
isolation for a while longer, while we see what it is that
bit you. You'll be seeing a lot of me — I'm one of your
two doctors. My name is Anna Jorgenson-Kepal, and
you can call me Anna, or Doctor Anna if you like, but I
don't think we need to be that formal. Your other doc-
tor is Rennet Uhua-Sorg. You won't be seeing much of
him until you're out of isolation, because he's a
paraplegic and he's in a Moto-Chair. Can't fit one of
them into a pressure-suit"

The holo-screen above the bed flickered into life,
and the head and shoulders of a thin, ascetic-looking
young man appeared there. "Call me Kenny, Ha," the
young man said. "I absolutely refuse to be stuffy with
you. I'm sorry I can't meet you in person, but it takes
forever to decontam one of these fardling chairs, so
Anna gets to be my hands."

"That's — your chair — it's kind of like a modified
shell, isn't it?" she asked curiously, deciding that if they
were going to bring the subject up, she wasn't going to
be polite and avoid it. "I know a shellperson. Moira,
she's a brainship."

"Dead on!" Kenny said cheerfully. "Medico on the
half-shell, that's me! I just had a stupid accident when I
was a tweenie, not like you, getting bit by alien bugs!"

She smiled tentatively. / think I'm going to like him." Did
anyone ever tell you that you look just like Amenemhat

the Third?"

His large eyes widened even more. "Well, no — that
is definitely a new one. I hope it's a compliment! One of
my patients said I looked like Largo Delecron, the
synthcom star, but I didn't know she thought Largo
looked like a refugee from a slaver camp!"

"It is," she assured him hastily. "He's one of my
favorite Pharaohs."

Til have to see if I can't cultivate the proper
Pharaonic majesty, then," Kenny replied with a grin.

50

AtmeMcCaffrq & Merceries Lackey

"It might do me some good when I have to drum some
sense into the heads of some of the Psychs around
here! They've been trying to get at you ever since we
admitted you."

If she could have shivered with apprehension, she
would have. "I don't have to see them, do I?" she asked
in a small voice. "They never stop asking stupid ques-
tions!"

"Absolutely not," Anna said firmly. "I have a double-
doctorate; one of them is in headshrinking. I am quite
capable of assessing you all by myself."

Tia's heart sank when Anna mentioned her degree
in Psych — but it rose the moment she referred to
Psych as "headshrinking." None of the Psychs who had
plagued her life until now ever called their profession
by something as frivolous as "headshrinking."

She patted Tia's shoulder. "Don't worry, Tia. It's my
opinion that you are a very brave young lady — a Btde
too responsible, but otherwise just fine. They spend too
much time analyzing children and not enough time
actually seeing them or paying attention to them." She
smiled inside her helmet, and a curl of hair escaped
down to dangle above her left eyebrow, making her
look a lot more human.

"Listen, Tia, there's a little bit of fur missing from
your bear, and a scrap of stuffing," Kenny said. "Anna
says you wouldn't notice, but I thought we ought to tell
you anyway. We checked him over for alien bugs and
neurotoxins, and he's got a dean bill of health. When
you come out of Coventry, we'll decontam him again to
be sure, but we know he wasn't the problem, in case you
were wondering."

She had wondered.... Moira wouldn't have done
anything on purpose, of course, but it would have been
horrible if her sickness had been due to Ted. Moira
would have felt awful, not to mention how Tomas
would feel.

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

51

"What's his name?" Anna asked, busying herself
with something at the head of the bed. Tia couldn't
turn her head far enough to see what it was.

"Theodore Edward Bear," she replied, surrep-
titiously rubbing her cheek against his soft fur. "Moira
gave him to me, because she used to have a bear named
Ivan the Bearable."

"Excellent name, Theodore. It suits him," Anna said.
"You know, I think your Moira and I must be about the
same age — there was a kind of fad for bears when I
was little. I had a really nice bear in a flying suit called
Amelia Bearhart." She chuckled. "I still have her,
actually, but she mostly sits on the bureau in my guest
room. She's gotten to be a very venerable matriarch in

her old age."

But bears weren't really what she wanted to talk
about. Now that she knew where she was, and that she
was in isolation. "How long am I going to be in here?"
she asked in a small voice.

Kenny turned very serious, and Anna stopped fid-
dling with things. Kenny sucked on his lower lip for a
moment before actually replying, and the hum of the
machinery in her room seemed very loud. "The Psychs
were trying to tell us that we should try and cushion
you, but — Tia, we think that you are a very unusual
girl. We think you would rather know the complete
truth. Is that the case?"
Would she? Or would she rather pretend —
But this wasn't like making up stories at a dig. If she
pretended, things would only seem worse when they
finally told her the truth, if it was bad.

"Ye-es," she told them both, slowly. "Please."
"We don't know," Anna told her. "I wish we did. We
haven't found anything in your blood, and we're only
just now trying to isolate things in your nervous sys-
tem. But—well, we're assuming it's a bug that got you,
a proto-virus, maybe, but we don't know, and that's the

52

Anne McCaffrey &? Mercedes Lackey

truth. Until we know, we won't know if we can fix you

again."

Not when. If.

The possibility that she might sto)i like this for the rest
of her life chilled her.

"Your parents are in isolation, too," Kenny said, has-
tily, "but they are one hundred percent fine. There's
nothing wrong with them at all. So that makes things
harder."

"I understand, I think," she said in a small, nervous-
sounding voice. She took a deep breath. "Am I getting
worse?"

Anna went very still. Kenny's face darkened, and he
bit his lower lip.

"Well," he said quietly. "Yes. We're having to think
about mobility, and maybe even life-support for you.
Something considerably more than my chair. I wish I
could tell you differently, Tia."

"That's all right," she said, trying to ease his distress.
"I'd rather know."

Anna leaned down to whisper something through
her suit-mike. "Tia, if you're afraid of crying, don't be.
If I were in your position, I'd cry. And if you would like
to be alone, tell us, all right?"

"Okay," she replied, faindy. "Uh, can I be alone for a
while, please?"

"Sure." She stopped pretending to fuss with equip-
ment and nodded shortly at the hoio-screen. Kenny
brought up one hand to wave at her, and the screen
blinked ouL Anna left through what Tia now realized
was a decontam-airlock a moment later. Leaving her
alone with the hissing, humming equipment, and Ted.

She swallowed a lump in her throat and thought
very hard about what they'd told her.

She wasn't getting any better, she was getting worse.
They didn't know what was wrong. That was on the
negative side. On the plus side, there was nothing

THE SHIP WHOSEARCHED

53

wrong with Mum and Dad, and they hadn't said to give

up all hope.
Therefore, she should continue to assume that they

would find a cure.

She cleared her throat. "Hello?" she said.

As she had thought, there was an AI monitoring the

room.

"Hello," it replied, in the curiously accentless voice
only an AI could produce. "What is your need?"

"I'd like to watch a holo. History," she said, after a
moment of thought "There's a holo about Queen Hat-
shepsut of Egypt It's called Phoenix ofRa, I think. Have
you got that?"

That had been on the forbidden list at home; Tia
knew why. There had been some pretty steamy scenes
with the Pharaoh and her architect in there. Tia was
fascinated by the only female to declare herself
Pharaoh, however, and had been decidedly annoyed
when a little sex kept her from viewing this one.

"Yes, I have access to that," the AI said after a
moment. "Would you like to view it now?"

So they hadn't put any restrictions on her viewing
privileges! "Yes," she replied; then, eager to strike
while she had the chance, "And after that, I'd like to see
the Aten trilogy, about Ahnkenaten and the heretics —
that's Aten Rising, Aten at Zenith, and Aten Descending."

Those had more than a few steamy scenes; she'd
overheard her mother saying that some of the theories
that had been dramatized fairly explicitly in the trilogy,
while they made comprehensible some otherwise inex-
plicable findings, would get the holos banned in some
cultures. And Braddon had chuckled and replied that
the costumes alone — or lack of them — while com-
pletely accurate, would do the same. Still—Ha figured
she could handle it And if it was that bad, it would cer-
tainly help keep her mind off her own troubles!

"Very well," the AI said agreeably. "Shall I begin?"

54

Aims McCaffrey &? Mercedes Lackey

"Yes," she told it, with another caress ofher cheek on
Ted's soft fur. "Please."

Pota and Braddon watched their daughter with
frozen faces, faces that Tia was convinced covered a
complete welter of emotions that they didn't want her
to see. She took a deep breath, enunciated "Chair for-
ward, five feet," and her Moto-Chair glided forward
and stopped hefore it touched them.

"Well, now I can get around at least," she said, with
what she hoped sounded like cheer. "I was getting
awfully tired of the same four walls!"

Whatever it was that she had — and now she heard
the words "proto-virus" and "dystrophic sclerosis"
bandied about more often than not — the medics had
decided it wasn't contagious. They'd let Pota and Brad-
don out of isolation, and they'd moved Tia to another
room, one that had a door right onto the corridor. Not
that it made much difference, except that Anna didn't
have to use a decontam airlock and pressure-suit
anymore. And now Kenny came to see her in person.
But four white walls were still four white walls, and
there wasn't much variation in rooms.

Still — she was afraid to ask for things to personalize
the room. Afraid that if she made it more her own —
she'd be stuck in it. Forever.

Her numbness and paralysis extended to most of
her body now, except for her facial muscles. And there
it stopped. Just as inexplicably as it had begun.

They'd put her in die quadriplegic version of the
Moto-Chair; just like Kenny's except that she control-
led hers with a few commands and series of
tongue-switches and eye movements. A command sent
it forward, and the direction she looked would tell it
where to go. And hers had mechanical "arms" that fol-
lowed set patterns programmed in to respond to more
commands. Any command had to be prefaced by

THESHIPWHOSEARCHED

55

"chair" or "arm." A clumsy system, but it was the best
they could do without direct synaptic connections from
the brainstem, like those of a shellperson.

Her brainstem was still intact, anyway. Whatever it
was had gotten her spine, but not that.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, she thought with bitter
irony, haw was the play?

"What do you think, pumpkin?" Braddon asked, his
voice quivering only a little.

"Hey, this is stellar, Dad," she replied cheerfully. "It's
just like piloting a ship! I think I'll challenge Doctor
Kenny to a race!"

Pota swallowed very hard and managed a tremulous
smile. "It won't be for too long," she said without convic-
tion. "As soon as they find out what's set up housekeeping
in there, they'll have you better in no time."

She bit her lip to keep from snapping back and dug
up a fatuous grin from somewhere. The likelihood of
finding a cure diminished more with every day, and she
knew it Neither Anna nor Kenny made any attempt to
hide that from her.

But there was no point in making her parents
unhappy. They already felt bad enough.

She tried out all the points of the chair for them,
until not even they could stand it anymore. They left,
making excuses and promising to come back — and
they were succeeded immediately by a stream of
interns and neurological specialists, each of whom had
more variations on the same basic questions she had
answered a thousand times, each of whom had his own
pet theory about what was wrong.

"First my toes felt like they were asleep when I woke up one
morning, but it wore off. Then it didn't wear off. Then instead
of waking up with tingles, I woke up numb. Not sir, it never
actually hurt. No, ma'am, it only went as far as my heel at first.
Yes, sir, then after two days my fingers started. No ma'am, just
the fingers not the whole hand...."

56

Anne McCaffrey &? Mercedes Lackey

Hours of it. But she knew that they weren't being
nasty, they were trying to help her, and being able to
help her depended on how cooperative she was.

But their questions didn't stop the questions of her
own. So for it was just sensory nerves and voluntary
muscles and nerves. What if it went to the involuntary
ones, and she woke up unable to breathe? What then?
What if she lost control of her facial muscles? Every lit-
tle tingle made her break out in a sweat of panic,
thinking it was going to happen....

Nobody had answers for any questions. Not hers,
and not theirs.

Finally, just before dinner, they went away. After
about a half an hour, she mastered control of the arms
enough to feed herself, saving herself the humiliation
of having to call a nurse to do it. And the chair's own
plumbing solved the humiliation of the natural result
of eating and drinking....

After supper, when the tray was taken away, she was
left in the growing darkness of the room, quite alone.
She would have slumped, if she could have. It was just
as well that Pota and Braddon hadn't returned; having
them there was a strain. It was harder to be brave in
front of them than it was in front of strangers.

"'Chair, turn seventy degrees right," she ordered.
"Left arm, pick up bear."

With a soft whir, the chair obeyed her.

"Leftarm.putbear—cancel. Left arm, bring bear to
left efface." The arm moved a little. "Closer. Closer.
Hold."

Now she cuddled Ted against her cheek, and she
could pretend that it was her own arm holding him
there.

With no one there to see, slow, hot tears formed in
her eyes and trickled down her cheeks. She leaned her
head to the left a little, so that they would soak into
Ted's soft blue fur and not betray her.

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

57

"It's not fair," she whispered to Ted, who seemed to
nod with sad agreement as she rubbed her cheek
against him. "It's not fair...."

/ wanted to find the EsKay homeworld. I wanted to go out
with Mum and Dad and be the one to find the homeworld. I
wanted to write books. I wanted to stand up in front of people
and make them laugh and get excited, and see how history and
archeology aren't dead, they're just asleep. I wanted to do things
they make holos out of. I wanted—I wanted —

/ wanted to see things! I wanted to drive grav-sleds and
swim in a real lagoon and feel a storm and—
—and 1wanted —

Some of the scenes from the holos she'd been watch-
ing came back with force now, and memories of Pota
and Braddon, when they thought she was engrossed in
a book or a holo, giggling and cuddling like

tweenies....

/ wanted to find out about boys. Boys and kisses and—
And now nobody's ever going to look at me and see me. All

they're going to see is this big metal thing. That's all they see

now....

Even if a boy ever wanted to kiss me, he'd have to get past a
half ton of machinery, and it would probably bleep an alarm.

The tears poured faster now, with the darkness of
the room to hide them.

They wouldn't have put me in this thing if they thought I was
going to get better. 7*m never going to get better. Vm only going
to get worse, f can't feel anything, I'm nothing but a head in a
machine. And if I get worse, will I go deaf? Blind?

"Teddy, what's going to happen to me?" she sobbed,
"Am I going to spend the rest of my life in a room?"

Ted didn't know, any more than she did.

"It's not fair, it's not fair, I never did anything," she
wept, as Ted watched her tears with round, sad eyes,
and soaked them up for her. "It's not fair. I wasn't
finished. I hadn't even started yet...."

58

Anne McCaffrey & Mercedes Lackey

Kenny grabbed a tissue with one hand and
snapped off the camera-relay with the other. He
scrubbed fiercely at his eyes and blew his nose with a
combination of anger and grief. Anger, at his own im-
potence. Grief, for the vulnerable little girl alone in
that cold, impersonal hospital room, a little girl who
was doing her damnedest to put a brave face on
everything.

In public. He was the only one to watch her in
private, like this, when she thought there was no one to
see that her whole pose of cheer was nothing more
than a facade.

"I wasn't finished. 1wasn't even started yet."

"Damn it," he swore, scrubbing at his eyes again and
pounding the arm of his chair. "Damn it anyway!" What
careless god had caused her to choose the very words he
had used, fifteen years ago?

Fifteen years ago, when a stupid accident had left
him paralyzed from the waist down and put an end —
he thought — to his dreams for med school?

Fifteen years ago, when Doctor Harwat Kline-Bes
was his doctor and had heard him weeping alone into
his pillow?

He turned his chair and opened the viewport out
into the stars, staring at them as they moved past in a
panorama of perfect beauty that changed with the
rotation of the station. He let the tears dry on his
cheeks, let his mind empty.

Fifteen years ago, another neurologist had heard
those stammered, heartbroken words, and had
determined that they would not become a truth. He had
taken a paraplegic young student, bullied the makers
of an experimental Moto-Chair into giving the
youngster one — then bullied the dean of the Meyasor
State Medical College into admitting the boy. Then he
had seen to it that once the boy graduated, he got an
internship in this very hospital — a place where a

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

59

neurologist in a Moto-Chair was no great curiosity, not
with the sentients of a hundred worlds coming in as
patients and doctors....

A paraplegic, though. Not a quad. Not a child with a
brilliant, flexible mind, trapped in an inert body.

Brilliant mind. Inert body. Brilliant—

An idea blinded him, it occurred so suddenly. He was
not the only person watching Tia — there was one
other. Someone who watched every patient here, every
doctor, every nurse.... Someone he didn't consult too
often, because Lars wasn't a medico, or a shrink —

But in this case, Lars' opinion was likely to be more
accurate than anyone else's on this station. Including
his own.

He thumbed a control. "Lars," he said shortly. "Got a
minute, buddy?"

He had to wait for a moment Lars was a busy guy —
though hopefully at this hour there weren't too many
demands on his conversational circuits. "Certainly,
Kenny," Lars replied after a few seconds. "How can I
help the neurological wunderkind of Central Worlds
MedStation Pride of Albion? Hmm?" The voice was rich
and ironic; Lars rather enjoyed teasing everyone on-
board. He called it "therapeutic deflation of egos." He
particularly liked deflating Kenny's — he had said
more than once that everyone else was so afraid of
being "unkind to the poor cripple" that they danced on
eggs to avoid telling him when he was full of it.

"Can the sarcasm, Lars," Kenny replied. "I've got a
serious problem that I want your opinion on."

"My opinion?" Lars sounded genuinely surprised.
"This must be a personal opinion — I'm certainly not
qualified to give you a medical one."

"Most definitely, a very personal opinion, one that
you are the best suited to give. On Hypatia Cade."

"Ah." Kenny thought that Lars' tone softened con-
siderably. "The little child in the Neuro unit, with the

60

Anne McCaffrey Es1 Mercedes Lackey

unchildlike taste in holos. She still thinks I'm the Al. I
haven't dissuaded her."

"Good, I want her to be herself around you, for the
gods of space know she won't be herself around the rest
of us." He realized that his tone had gone savage and
carefully regained control over himself before he con-
tinued. "You've got her records and you've watched
the kid herself. I know she's old for it—but how would
she do in the shell program?"

Along pause. Longer than Lars needed simply to
access and analyze records. "Has her condition stabi-
lized?" he asked, cautiously. "If it hasn't — if she goes
brain-inert halfway into her schooling — it'd not only
make problems for anyone else you'd want to bring in
late, it'll traumatize the other shell-kids badly. They
don't handle death well, I wouldn't be a party to
frightening them, however inadvertendy."

Kenny massaged his temple with the long, clever
fingers that had worked so many surgical miracles for
others and could do nothing for this little girl. "As far as
we can tell anything about this — disease — yes, she's
stable," he said finally. "Take a look in there and you'll
see I ordered a shotgun approach while we were test-
ing her. She's had a full course of every anti-viral
neurological agent we've got a record of. And non-
invasive things like a course of ultra — well, you can see
it there. I think we killed it, whatever it was."

Too late to help her. Damn it.

"She's brilliant," Lars said cautiously. "She's flexible.
She has the ability to multi-thread, to do several things
at once. And she's had good, positive reactions to con-
tact with shellpersons in the past."

"So?" Kenny asked, impatiently, as the stars passed
by in their courses, indifferent to the fete of one little
girl. "Your opinion."

"I think she can make the transition," Lars said, with
more emphasis than Kenny had ever heard in his voice

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

61

before. "I think she'll not only make the transition,

He let out the breath he'd been holding in a sigh.

"Physically, she is certainly no worse off than many in
the shellperson program, including yours truly," Lars
continued. "Frankly, Kenny, she's got so much poten-
tial it would be a crime to let her rot in a hospital room
for the rest of her life."

The careful control Lars normally had over his voice
was gone; there was passion in his words that Kenny
had never heard him display until this moment. "Got
to you, too, did she?" he said dryly.

"Yes," Lars said, biting off the word. "And I'm not
ashamed of it I don't mind telling you that she had me
in — well, not tears, but certainly the equivalent."

"Good for you." He rubbed his hands together,
warming cold fingers. "Because I'm going to need your
connivance again."

"Going to pull another fast one, are you?" Lars
asked with ironic amusement.

'[Just a few strings. What good does being a stellar
intellect do me, if I can't make use of the position?" he
asked rhetorically. He shut the viewport and pivoted
his chair to face his desk, keying on his terminal and
linking it direcdy to Lars and a very personal database.
One called "Favors." "All right, my friend, let's get to
work. First, whose strings can you jerk? Then, who on
the political side has influence in the program, of that
set, who owes me the most, and of that subset, who's
due here the soonest?"

A Sector Secretary-General did not grovel, nor did
he gush, but to Kenny's immense satisfaction, when
Quintan Waldheim-Querar y Chan came aboard the
Pride of Albion, the very first thing he wanted, after all
the official inspections and the like were over, was to
meet with the brilliant neurologist whose work had

62

Atme McCaffrey fc? Mercedes Lackey

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

63

saved his nephew from the same fate as Kenny himself
He already knew most of what there was to know about
Kenny and his meteoric career.

And Quintan Waldheim-Querar y Chan was not the
sort to avoid an uncomfortable topic.

"A little ironic, isn't it?" the Secretary-General said,
after the firm handshake, with a glance at Kenny's
Moto-Chair. He stood up and did not tug self-
consciously at his conservative dark blue tunic.

Kenny did not smile, but he took a deep breath of
satisfaction. Doubly good. No more calk, we have a winner.

"What, that my injury was virtually identical to
Peregrine's?" he replied immediately. "Not ironic at all,
sir. The fact that 1 found myself in this position was
what prompted me to go into neurology in the first
place. I won't try to claim that if I hadn't been injured,
and hadn't worked so hard to find a remedy for the
same injuries, someone else might not have come up
with the same answer that I did. Medical research is a
matter of building on what has come before, after all."

"But without your special interest, the solution
might well have come too late to do Peregrine any
good," the Secretary-General countered. "And it was
not only your technique, it was your skill that pulled
him through. There is no duplication of that — not in
this sector, anyway. That's why I arranged for this visit
I wanted to thank you."

Kenny shrugged deprecatingly. This was the most
perfect opening he'd ever seen in his life — and he had
no intention of letting it get away from him. Not when
he had the answer Co Tia's prayers trapped in his office.

"I can't win them all, sir," he said flatly. "I'm not a
god. Though there are times I wish most profoundly
that I was, and right now is one of them."

The Great Man's expression sobered. The
Secretary-General was not just a Great Man because he
was an excellent administrator; he was one because he

had a human side, and that human and humane side
could be touched. "I take it you have a case that is trou-
bling you?" Then, conscious of the feet that he Owed
Kenny, he said the magic words. "Perhaps I can help?"

Kenny sighed, as if he were reluctant to continue the
discussion. Wouldn't do to seem too eager. "Well — would
you care to see some tape of the child?**

Child. Children were one of the Great Man's weak-
nesses. He had sponsored more child-oriented
programs than any three of his predecessors com-
bined. "Yes. If it would not be violating the child's
privacy."

"Here — " Kenny flicked a switch, triggering the
holo-record he already had keyed up. A record he and
Anna had put together. Carefully edited, carefully
selected, compiled from days of recordings with Lars'
assistance and the psych-profile of the Great Man to
guide them. "I promise I won't take more than fifteen
minutes of your time."

The first seven and a half minutes of this recording
were ofTia at her most attractive; being very brave and
cheerful for the interns and her parents. "This is
Hypatia Cade, the daughter of Pota Andropolous-
Cade and Braddon Maartens-Cade," he explained,
over the holo. Quickly he outlined her background
and her pathetic little story, stressing her high intel-
ligence, her flexibility, her responsibility. "The
prognosis isn't very cheerful, I'm afraid," he said,
watching his chrono carefully to time his speech with
the end of that section of tape. "No matter what we do,
she's doomed to spend the rest of her life in some
institution or other. The only way she could be at all
mobile would be through direct synaptic connections
— well, we don't do that here — they can only link in
that way at Lab Schools, the shellperson project—"

He stopped, as the holo flickered and darkened. Tia
was alone.

64	Anne McCaffrey & Merceries Lackey

The arm of her chair reached out and grasped the sad
little blue bear, hidden until now by the tray table and a pil-
low. It brought the toy in close to her face, and she gently
rubbed her cheek against its soft fur coat The lightning-
bolt of the Courier Service on its shirt stood out clearly in
this shot... one reason why Kenny had chosenit

"They've gone, Ted," she whispered to her bear.
"Mum and Dad — they've gone back to the Institute,
There's nobody left here but you, now,"

A single bright tear formed in one corner of her eye
and slowly rolled down her cheek, catching what little
light there was in the room.

"What? Oh, no, it's not their fault, Ted — they had
to. The Institute said so, I saw the dispatch. It said — it
said since I w-w-wasn't going to get any b-b-b-better
there was no p-p-p-point in — in — wasting v-v-valu-

ablet-t-time— "

She sobbed once, and buried her face in the teddy

bear's fur.

After a moment, her voice came again, muffled.
"Anyway, it hurts them so m-much. And it's s-s-so hard
tobeb-brave for them. But if I cried, th-they'd only feel
w-worse. I think m-maybe it's b-better this way, don't
you? Easier. F-for every-b-b-b-body...."

The holo flickered again; same time, nearly the same
position, but a different day. This time she was crying
openly, tears coursing down her cheeks as she sobbed
into the bear's little shirt.

"We've given her the complete run of the library and
the holo collection," Kenny said, very softly. "Normally,
they keep her relatively amused and stimulated — but
just before we filmed this, she picked out an episode of
The Stellar Explorers — and — well — her parents said
she had planned to be a pilot, you see — "

She continued to cry, sobbing helplessly, the only
understandable words being "—Teddy — I wanted —
to go—I wanted to see the stars — "

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

65

The holo flickered out, as Kenny turned the lights in
his office back up. He reached for a tissue and wiped
his eyes without shame. "I'm afraid she affects me
rather profoundly," he said, and smiled weakly. "So
much for my professional detachment."

The Great Man blinked rapidly to clear his own eyes.
"Why isn't something being done for that child?" he
demanded, his voice hoarse.

"We've done all we can — here," Kenny said. "The
only possibility of giving that poor child any kind of a
life is to get her into the shellperson program. But the
Psychs at the Laboratory Schools seem to think she's
too old. They wouldn't even send someone to come
evaluate her, even though the parents petitioned them
and we added our own recommendations...."

He let the sentence trail off significantly. The
Secretary-General gave him a sharp look. "And you
don't agree with them, I take it?"

Kenny shrugged. "It isn't just my opinion," he said
smoothly. "It's die opinion of the staff Psych assigned to
her, the shellperson running this station, and a brain-
ship friend of hers in the Courier Service. The one," he
added delicately, "who gave her that little bear."

Mentioning the bear sold the deal; Kenny could see
it in the Great Man's expression. "We'll just see about
that," the Secretary-General said. "The people you
talked to don't have all the answers—and they certainly
don't have the final say." He stood up and offered
Kenny his hand again. "I won't promise anything —
but don't be surprised if there's someone from the
Laboratory Schools here to see her in the next few
days. How soon can you have her ready for transfer, if
they take her?"

"Within twelve hours, sir," Kenny replied, secretly
congratulating himself for getting her parents to sign a
writ-of-consent before they left. Of course, they
thought it was for experimental procedures.

66

Arme McCaffrey £sf Mercedes Lackey

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

67

Then again, Pota and Braddon had been the ones
who'd broached the idea of the shellperson program to
the people at the Laboratory Schools and been turned
down because ofTia's age.

"Twelve hours?" The Great Man raised an eyebrow.
Kenny returned him look for look.

"Her parents are under contract to the Archeologi-
cal Institute," he explained. "The Institute called them
back out into the field, because their parental emer-
gency leave was up. They weren't happy, but it was
obey or be fired. Hard to find another job in that field
that isn't with the Institute." He coughed. "Well, they
trusted my work, and made me Tia's full guardian
before they left."

"So you have right-of-disposition and guardianship.
Very tidy." The Secretary-General's wry smile showed
that he knew he had been maneuvered into this — and
that he was not annoyed. "All right. There'll be some-
one from the schools here within the week. Unless
there's something you haven't told me about the girl,
he should finish his evaluation in two days. At the end
of those two days..." One eyebrow raised significantly.
"Well, it would be very convenient if he could take the
new recruit back with him, wouldn't it?"

"Yes, sir," Kenny said happily. "It would indeed, sir."

If it hadn't been for Doctor Uhua-Sorg's reputation
and the pleas of his former pupil, Lars Mendoza,
Philip Gryphon bint Brogen would have been only too
happy to tell the committee where to stick the
Secretary-General's request. And what to do with it
after they put it there. One did not pull strings to get an
unsuitable candidate into the shell program! Maybe
the Secretary-General thought he could get away with
that kind of politicking with Academy admissions, but
he was going to find out differently here.

Philip was not inclined to be coaxed and would not

give in to bullying. So it was in a decidedly belligerent
state of mind that he disembarked from his shuttle onto
the docks of the Pride of Albion. Like every hospital sta-
tion, this one affronted him with its sterile white walls
and atmosphere of self-importance.

There was someone waiting — obviously for him —
in the reception area. Someone in a Moto-Chair. A
handsome young man with thick dark hair and a thin,
ascetic face.

If they thmk they can soften me up by assigning me to some-
one they think I won't dare be nide to — he thought
savagely, as the young man glided the Chair toward
him. Conniving beggars—

"Professor Brogen?" said the ridiculously young,
vulnerable-looking man, holding out his hand. "I'm
Doctor Sorg."

"If you think I'm going to — " Brogen began, not
reaching out to take it — then the name registered on
him and he did a classic double-take. "Doctor Sorg? Doc-
tor Uhua-Sorg?"

The young man nodded, just the barest trace of a
smile showing on his lips.

"Doctor Kennet Uhua-Sorg?" Brogen asked, feeling
as if he'd been set up, yet knowing he had set up him-
self for this particular fall.

"Yes indeed," the young man replied. "I take it that
you weren't — ah — expecting me to meet you in
person.**

A chance for an out—not a graceful one, but an out
— and Brogen took it "Hardly," he repbed brusquely.
"The Chief of Neurosurgery and Neurological
Research usually does not meet a simple professor on
behalf of an ordinary child."

"Tia is far from ordinary, Professor," Doctor Sorg
responded, never once losing that hint of smile. "Any
more than you are a 'simple' professor. But, if you'll fol-
low me, you'll find out about Tia for yourself"

68

Anne McCaffrty & Mercedes Lackey

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

69

Well, he's right about one thing, Brogen thought grudg-
ingly, after an hour spent in Tia's company while
hordes of interns and specialists pestered, poked and
prodded her. She's not ordinary. Any "ordinary" chM would
be having a screaming tantrum by now. She was an extraor-
dinarily attractive child as well as a patient one; her
dark hair had been cropped short to keep it out of the
way, but her thin, pixie-like face and big eyes made her
look like the model for a Victorian fairy. A fairy trapped
in a fist of metal... tormented and teased by a swarm of
wasps.

"How much longer is this going to go on?" he asked
Rennet Sorg in an irritated whisper.

Kennet raised one eyebrow. "That's for you to say," he
replied. "You are here to evaluate her. If you want more
time alone with her, you have only to say the word. This is
her second session for die day, by the way," he added, and
Brogen could have sworn there was a hint of— smug-
ness? — in his voice. "She played host to another swarm
this morning, between nine and noon."

Now Brogen was outraged, but on the child's behal£
Kennet Sorg must have read that in his expression, for
he turned his chair towards the cluster of white-
uniformed interns, cleared his throat, and got their
instant attention.

"That will be all for today," he said quietly. "If you
please, ladies and gentlemen. Professor Brogen would
like to have some time with Tia alone."

There were looks of disappointment and some even
of disgust cast Brogen's way, but he ignored them. The
child, at least, looked relieved.

Before he could say anything to Kennet Sorg, he
realized that the doctor had followed the others out the
door, which was closing behind his chair, leaving
Brogen alone with the child. He cleared his own throat
awkwardly.

The little girl looked at him with a most peculiar
expression in her eyes. Not fear, but wariness.

"You're not a Psych, are you?" she asked.

"Well — no," he said. "Not exactly. I'll probably ask
some of the same questions, though."

She sighed, and closed her soft brown eyes for a
moment. "I'm very tired of having my head shrunk,"
she replied forthrightly. "Very, very tired. And it isn't
going to make any difference at all in the way I think,
anyway. It isn't/at^ but this — " she bobbed her chin at
her chair " — isn't going to go away because it isn't fair.
Right?"

"Sad, but true, my dear." He began to relax, and
realized why. Kennet Sorg was tight This was no ordi-
nary child; talking with her was not like talking to a
child — but it was like talking to one of the kids in the
shell program. "So — how about if we chat about
something else entirely. Do you know any shellper-
sons?"

She gave him an odd look. "They must not have told
you very much about me," she said. "Either that, or
you didn't pay very much attention. One of my very
best friends is a brainship — Moira Valentine-Maya.
She gave me Theodore."

Theodore? Oh — right. Thebear— Hecastaquick
glance over towards die bed — and there was the som-
ber-looking little bear in a Courier Service shirt that
he'd been told about.

"Did you ever think about what being in a shell must
be like?" he asked, fishing for a way to explain the pro-
gram to her without letting her know she was being
evaluated.

"Of course I did!" she said, not bothering to hide her
scorn. "I told Moira that 1 wanted to be just like her
when I grew up, and she laughed at me and told me all
about what the schools were like and everything—"

And then, before he could say anything, the

70

Anne McCaffrey fc? Mercedes Lackey

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

71

unchildlike child proceeded to tell him about his o\vn
program. The brainship side, at any rate.

Pros and cons. From having to be able to multi-task,
to the thrill of experiencing a singularity and warp-
space firsthand. From being locked forever in a metal
skin, to the loneliness of knowing that you were going
to outlive all your partners but the last...

"I told her that I guessed I didn't want to go in when
I figured out that you could never touch anybody
again," she concluded, wearily. "I know you've got sen-
sors to the skin and everything, but that was what 1
didn'tlike. Kind of funny, huh?"

"Why?" he asked without thinking.

"Because now — I can't touch anybody. And I won't
ever again. So it's kind of funny. I can't touch anyone
anymore, but I can't be a brainship either." The tired
resignation in her voice galvanized him.

"I don't know why you couldn't," he said, aware that
he had already made up his mind, and both aghast and
amused at himself "There's room in this year's class for
another couple of new candidates; there's even room
in the brainship category for one or two pupils."

She blinked at him, then blurted, "But they told me 1
was too old!"

He laughed. "My dear,))0tt wouldn't be too old if you
were your mother's age. You would have been a good
shell-program candidate well past puberty." He still
couldn't believe this child; responsible, articulate,
flexible.... Lars and Rennet Sorg had been right. It
made him wonder how many other children had been
rejected out of hand, simply because of age — how
many had been lost to a sterile existence in an institu-
tion, just because they had no one as persistent and as
influential as Kennet Sorg to plead their cases.

Well, one thing at a time. Grab this one now. Put
something in place to take care of the others later. "I'm
going to have to go through the motions and file the

pap

..erwork — but Tia, if you want, you can consider
yourself recruited this very instant."

"Yes!" she burst out "Oh, yes! Yes, yes, yes! Oh,
please, thank you, thank you so much — " Her cheeks
were wet with tears, but the joy on her face was so in-
tense that it was blinding. Professor Brogen blinked
and swallowed a lump in his throat.

"The advantage of recruiting someone your age,"
he said, ignoring her tears and his tickling eyes, "is that
you can make your career path decision right away.
Shellpersons don't all go into brainships — for
instance, you could opt for a career with the Institute;
they've been asking to hire a shellperson to head their
home-base research section for the last twenty years.
You could do original research on the findings of
others — even your parents' discoveries. You could
become a Spaceport Administrator, or a Station Ad-
ministrator. You could go into law, or virtually any
branch of science. Even medicine. With the synaptic
links we have, there is no career you cannot consider."

"But I want to be a brainship," she said firmly.

Brogen took a deep breath. While he agreed with
her emotionally—well, there were some serious draw-
backs. "Tia, a lot of what a brainship does is — well,
being a truck driver or a cabby. Ferrying people or
things from one place to another. It isn't very
glamorous work. It is quite dangerous, both physically
and psychologically. You would be very valuable, and
yet totally unarmed, unless you went into the military
branch, which I don't think you're suited for, frankly.
You would be a target for thieves and malcontents. And
there is one other thing; the ship is very expensive. In
my not-so-humble opinion, brainship service is just
one short step from indentured slavery. You are literal-
ly paying for the use and upkeep of that ship by
mortgaging yourself. There is very little chance of
buying your contract out in any reasonable length of

72

Anne McCaffrey 6? Mercedes Lackey

time unless you do something truly spectacular or take
on very dangerous duties. The former isn't likely to
happen in ordinary service — and you won't be able to
exchange boring service for whatever your fancy is."

Tia looked stubborn for a moment, then thoughtful.
"All of that is true," she said, finally. "But — Professor,
Dad always said I had his astrogator genes, and I was
already getting into tensor physics, so I have the head
for starflight. And it's what I want."

Brogen turned up his hands. "I can't argue with
that- There's no arguing with preferences, is there?" In
a way, he was rather pleased. As self-possessed as Tia
was, she would do very well in brainship service. And as
stable as she seemed to be, there was very little chance
of her having psychological problems, unless some-
thing completely unforeseen came up.

She smiled shyly. "Besides, I talked this over with
Moira — you know, giving her ideas on how she could
get some extra credits to help with all her fines for
bouncing her brawns? Since she was with Archeology
and Exploration as a courier, there were lots of chances
for her to see things that the surveyors might not, and I
kind of told her what to look for. I kind of figured that
with my background, it wouldn't be too hard to get
assigned to A and E myself, and I could do the same
things, only better. I could get a lot of credits that way.
And once I owned my ship — well, 1 could do whatever
I wanted."

Brogen couldn't help himself; he started to laugh.
"You are quite the young schemer, did you know that?"

She grinned, looking truly happy for the first time
since he had seen her. Now that he had seen the real
thing, he recognized all her earlier "smiles" for the
shams that they had been.

Leaving her here would have been a crime. A sin.

"Well, you can consider yourself recruited," he said
comfortably. "I'll fill out the paperwork tonight,

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

73

databurst it to the schools as soon as I finish, and there
should be a confirmation waiting for us when we wake
up. Think you can be ready to ship out in the morn-

ing?"

"Yes, sir," she said happily.

He rose and started to leave — then paused for a

m«You know," he said, "you were right. I really didn't
pay too much attention to the file they gave me on you,
since I was so certain that—well, never mind. But I am
terribly curious about your name. Why on earth did
your parents call you 'Hypatia'?"

Tia laughed out loud, a peal of infectious joy.

"I think, Professor Brogen," she said, "that you'd
better sit back down!"

CenCom's softperson operator had a pleasant voice
and an equally pleasant habit of not starting a call with a
burst of static or an alert-beep. "XH One-Oh-Three-
Three, you have an incoming transmission. Canned
message beam."

Ha tore herself away from the latest papers on the
Salomon-Kildaire Entities with a purely mental sigh of
regret. Oh, she could take in a databurst and scan the
papers at the same time, certainly, but she wanted to do
more than simply scan the information. She wanted to
absorb it, so that she could think about it later in detail.
There were nuances to academic papers that simple
scanning wouldn't reveal; places where you had to
know the personality of the author in order to read
between the lines. Places where what wasn't written
were as important as what was.

"Go ahead, CenCom," she replied, wondering who on
earth—or off it, for diat matter—could be calling her.

Strange how we've been out ofTerran subspaceforso long,
and yet we still ttse expressions like "how on earth"... there's
probably a popular-science paper in that.

The central screen directly opposite the column she
was housed in flickered for a moment, then filled with
the image of a thin-faced man in an elaborate Moto-
Chair, No — more than a Moto-Chair; this one was
kind of a platform for something else. She saw what
could only be an APU, and a short-beam broadcast unit
of some kind. It looked like his legs and waist were
encased in the bottom half of space armor!

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

75

But there was no mistaking who was in the strange
exoskeleton. Doctor Kenny.

"Tia, my darling girl, congratulations on your
graduation!" Kenny said, eyes twinkling. "You should
_ given the vagaries of the CenCom postal system —
nave gotten your graduation present from Lars and
Anna and me. I hope you liked it—them—"

The graduation present had arrived on time, and Tia
had been enthralled. She loved instrumental music,
synthcom in particular, but these recordings had spe-
cial meaning for any shellperson, for they had been
composed and played by David Weber-Tcherkasky, a
shellperson himself, and they were not meant for the
limited ears of softpeople. The composer had made use
of every note of the aural spectrum, with super-
complexes of overtones and counterpoint that left
softpersons squinting in bewilderment. They weren't
for everyone — not even for some shellpersons — but
Tia didn't think she would ever get tired of listening to
them. Every time she played them, she heard some-
thing new.

" — anyway, I remembered you saying in your last
transmission how much you liked Lanz Manhem's
synthcom recordings, and Lars kept telling me that
Tcherkasky's work was to Manhem's what a symphony
was to birdsong." Kenny shrugged and grinned. "We
figured that it would help to while away the in-transit
hours for you, anyway. Anna said the graduation was
stellar — I'm sorry I couldn'tbe there, but you're look-
ing at the reason why."

He made a face and gestured down at the lower half
of his body. "Moto-Prosthetics decided in their infinite
wisdom that since I had benefited from their expertise
in the past, I owed them. They convinced the hospital
Admin Head that I was the only possible person to test
this contraption of theirs. This is supposed to be some-
thing that will let me stroll around a room — or more

76

Aime McCaffrey &? Mercedes Lackey

importantly, stand in an operating theater for as long
as I need to. When it's working, that is." He shook his
head. "Buggy as a new software system, let me tell you.
Yesterday the fardling thing locked up on me, with one
foot in the air Wasn't /just a charming sight, posing in
the middle of the hall like a dancer in a Greek frieze!
Think I'm going to rely on my old Chair when I really
need to do something, at least for a while."

Tia chuckled at the mental image of Kermy frozen in
place and unable to move.

He shook his head and laughed. "Well, between this
piece of— ah — hardware, and my patients, I had to
send Anna as our official deputation. Hope you've for-
given Lars and me, sweetheart—"

A voice, warm and amused, interrupted Doctor
Kenny. "There was just a wee problem with my getting
leave, after all," Lars said, over the office speakers, as
Kenny grinned. "And they simply wouldn't let me
de-orbit the station and take it down to the schools for the
graduation ceremony. Very inconsiderate of them, / say."

Tia had to laugh at that.

"That just means you'll have to come visit me. Now
that you're one of the club, far-traveler, we'll have to
exchange softie-jokes. How many softies does it take to
change a lightbulb?"

Kenny made a rude noise. Although he looked tired,
Tia noted that he seemed to be in very good spirits.
There was only one thing that combination meant;
he'd pulled off another miracle. "I resemble that
remark," he said. "Anyway, Lars got your relay num-
ber, so you'll be hearing from us — probably more
often than you want! We love you, lady! Big Zen hugs
from both of us!"

The screen flickered and went blank; Tia sighed with
contentment. Lars had been the one to come up with
"Zen hugs" — "the hugs that you would get, if we were
there, if we could hug you, but we aren't, and we can't"—

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

77

and he and Kenny began using them in their weekly
transmissions to Tia all through school. Before long her
entire class began using the phrase, so pointedly apt for
shellpeople, and now it was spreading across known
space. Kenny had been amused, especially after one of
his recovering patients got the phrase in a transmission
from his stay-at-home, techno-phobic wife!

Well, the transmission put the cap on her day, that
was certain. And the perfect climax to the beginning of
her new life. Anna and her parents at the graduation
ceremony, Professor Brogen handing out the special
awards she'd gotten in Xenology, Diplomacy, and First
Contact Studies, Moira showing up at the landing field
the same day she was installed in her ship, still with
Tbmas, wonder of wonders....

Having Moira there to figuratively hold her hand
during the nasty process of partial anesthesia while the
techs hooked her up in her column had been worth
platinum.

She shuddered at the memory. Oh, they could
describe the feelings (or rather, lack of them) to you, they
could psych you up for experience, and you thought
you were ready, but the moment of truth, when you
lost everything but primitive com and the few sensors
in the shell itself... was horrible. Something out of the
worst of nightmares.

And she still remembered what it had been like to
live with only softperson senses. She couldn't imagine
what it was like for those who'd been popped into a
shell at birth. It had brought back all the fear and feel-
ing of helplessness of her time in the hospital.

It had been easier with Moira there. But if the trans-
fer had been a journey through sensory-deprivation
hell, waking up in the ship had been pure heaven.

No amount of simulator training conveyed what it
really felt like, to have a living, breathing ship wrapped
around you.

78

Anne McCaffrey &? Mercedes Lackey

It was a moment that had given her back everything
she had lost. Never mind that her "skin" was duralloy
metal, her "legs" were engines, her "arms" the servos
she used to maintain herself inside and out. That her
"lungs" and "heart" were the life-support systems that
would keep her brawn alive. That all of her senses were
ship's sensors linked through brainstem relays. None
of that mattered. She had a body again! That was a
moment of ecstasy no one plugged into a shell at birth
would ever understand. Moira did, though ... and it
had been wonderful to be able to share that moment of
elation.

And Tomas understood, as only a brawn-partner of
long-standing could, Tomas had arranged for
Theodore Edward Bear to have his own litde case built
into the wall of the central cabin as his graduation
present. "And decom anyone who doesn't under-
stand," he said firmly, putting a newly cleaned Ted
behind his plexi panel and closing the door. "A brawn is
only a brawn, but a bear is a friend for life!"

So now the solemn little blue bear in his Courier
Service shirt reigned as silent supervisor over the
central cabin, and to perdition with whatever the
brawns made of him. Well, let them think it was some
kind of odd holo-art. Speaking of which, the next set
of brawn-candidates was due shortly. We II see how they
react to Ted.

Tia returned to her papers, keeping a running
statistical analysis and cross-tabulations on anything
that seemed interesting. And there were things that
seemed to be showing up, actually. Pockets of mineral
depletions in the area around the EsKay sites; an
astonishing similarity in the periodicity and seasonality
of the planets and planetoids. Insofar as a Mars-type
world could have seasons, that is. But the periodicity —
identical to within an hour. Interesting. Had they been
that dependent on natural sunlight? Come to think of it

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

79

__ yes, solar distances were very similar. And they were
all Sol-type stars.

She turned her attention to her parents' latest
papers, letting the EsKay discoveries stew in the back of
her mind. Pota and Braddon were the Schliemanns of
modern archeology, but it wasn't the EsKays that
brought them feme, at least, not directly. After Tia's ill-
ness, they couldn't bring themselves to return to their
old dig, or even the EsKay project — and for once, the
Institute committees acted like something other than
AIs with chips instead of hearts. Pota and Braddon
were reassigned to a normal atmosphere water-world
of high volcanic activity and thousands of tiny islands
with a good population of nomadic sentients, some-
thing as utterly unlike the EsKay planets as possible.
And it had been there that they made their discovery.
Tracing the legends of the natives, of a king who first
defied the gods and then challenged them, they repli-
cated Schliemann's famous discovery of ancient Troy,
uncovering an entire city buried by a volcanic erup-
tion. Perfectly preserved for all time. For this world and
these people, it was the equivalent of an Atlantis and
Pompeii combined, for the city was of Bronze Age tech-
nology while the latter-day sentients were still
struggling along with flint, obsidian, and shell, living in
villages of no more than two hundred. While the
natives of the present day were amphibious, leaning
towards the aquatic side, these ancients were almost
entirely creatures of dry land....

The discovery made Pota and Braddon's reputation;
there was more than enough there to keep fifty
archeologists busy for a hundred years. Ta'hianna be-
came their life-project, and they rarely left the site
anymore. They even established a permanent
residence aboard a kind of glorified houseboat.

Tia enjoyed reading their papers — and the private
speculations they had brought her, with some findings

80

Anne McCaffny Es1 Mercedes Lackey

that weren't in the papers yet — but the Ta'hianna
project simply didn't give her the thrill of mystery that
the EsKays did.

And — there was one other thing. Years of analyzing
every little nuance of those dreadful weeks had made
her decide diat what had happened to her could just as
easily happen to some other unwitting archeologist Or
even.— another child.

Only finding the homeworld of the EsKays would
give the Institute and Central World's Medical the
information they needed to prevent another tragedy
like Tia's.

If Tia had anything at all to say about it, that would
never happen again. The next person infected might
not be so lucky. The next person, if an adult, or even a
child unfortunate enough to be less flexible and less
intelligent than she had been, would likely have no
choice but to spend the remainder of a fairly miserable
life in a Moto-Chair and a room....

"XH One-Oh-Three-Three, your next set of brawn-
candidates is ready," CenCom said, interrupting her
brooding thoughts. "You are going to pick one of these,
aren't you?" the operator added wearily.

"I don't know yet," she replied, levelly. "I haven't
interviewed them." She had rejected the first set of six
entirely. CenCom obviously thought she was being a
prima donna. She simply thought she was being
appropriately careful. After all, since she was officially
assigned to A and E with special assignment to the
Institute, she had gotten precisely what she expected
— a ship without Singularity Drive. Those were top-of-
the-line, expensive, and not the sort of thing that the
Institute could afford to hire. So, like Moira, she would
be spending a lot of time in transit. Unlike Moira, she
did not intend to find herself bouncing brawns so often
that her buy-out had doubled because of die fines.

Spending a lot of time in transit meant a lot of time

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81

only her brawn for company. She wanted some-
one who was bright, first of all. At least as bright as
Tomas and Charlie. She wanted someone who would
be willing to add her little crusade to the standard
agenda and give it equal weight with what they had
officially been assigned. She rather thought she would
like to have a male, although she hadn't rejected any of
the brawns just because they were female.

Most of all, she wanted someone who would like her;
someone who would be a real partner in every sense.
Someone who would willingly spend time with her
when he could be doing other things; a friend, like
Kenny and Anna, Moira and Lars.

And someone with some personality. Two of the last
batch — both females — had exhibited all the per-
sonality of a cube of tofu.

That might do for another ship, another brain that
didn't want to be bothered with softpersons outside of
duty, but she wanted someone she could talk to! After
all, she had been a softperson once.

"Who's first?" she asked CenCom, lowering her lift
so that he — or she — could come aboard without
having to climb the stairs.

"That'll be Donning Chang y Narhan," CenCom
replied after a moment. "Really high marks in the
Academy."

She scanned the databurst as Donning crossed the tar-
mac to the launch pad; he'd gotten high marks all right,
though not stellar. Much like her; in the top tenth of the
class, but not the top one percent. Very handsome, if the
holo was to be believed; wavy blond hair, bright blue eyes,
sculptured face with holo-star looks — sculptured body,
too. But Tia was wary of good looks by now. Two of the
first lot had been gorgeous; one had been one of the
blocks of tofu, with nothing between the ears but what
the Academy had put there, and the other had only
wanted to talk about himself.

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Amu McCaffrey fc? Mercedes Lackey

Movement outside alerted her to Donning*s arrival;
to her annoyance, he operated the lift manually
instead of letting her handle it.

To her further annoyance, he treated her like some
kind of superior AI; he was obviously annoyed with
having to go through an interview in the first place and
wanted to be elsewhere.

"Donning Chang y Narhan, reporting," he said in a
bored tone of voice. "As ordered." He proceeded to rat-
tle off everything that had been in the short file, as if
she couldn't access it herself. He did not sit down. He
paid no attention to Ted.

"Have you any questions?" he asked, making it
sound as if questions would only mean that she had not
been paying attention.

"Only a few," she replied. "What is your favorite
composer? Do you play chess?"

He answered her questions curdy, as if they were so
completely irrelevant that he couldn't believe she was
asking them.

She obliged him by suggesting that he could leave after
only a handful of questions; he took it with bad grace and
left in a hurry, an aroma of scorched ego in his wake.

"Garrison Lebrel," CenCom said, as Donning
vacated the lift.

Well, Garrison was possible. Good academic marks,
not as high as Donning's but not bad. Interest in
archeology . . . she perked up when she saw what he
was interested in. Nonhumans, especially presumed
extinct space-going races, including the EsKays!

Garrison let her bring him in and proved to be talka-
tive, if not precisely congenial. He was very intense.

"We'll be spending a lot of time in transit," he said. "I
wasn't able to keep up with the current literature in
archeology while I was in the Academy, and I planned
to be doing a lot of reading."

Not exactly sociable. "Do you play chess?" she asked

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83

hopefully. He shook his head. "But I do play sennet
That's an ancient Egyptian game—I have a very inter-
esting software version 1 could install; I doubt it would
take you long to learn it, though it takes a lifetime to

master."

The last was said a bit smugly. And there had been no
offer from him to learn her game. Still, she did have
access to far more computing power than he did; it
wouldn't take her more than an hour to learn the
game, if that.

"I see that your special interest is in extinct space-
going races," she ventured. "I have a very strong
background in the Salomon-Kildaire Entities."

He looked skeptical. "I think Doctor Russell Gaines-
Barklen has probably dealt with them as fully as they
need lo be, although we'll probably have some chances
to catch things survey teams miss. That's the benefit of
being trained to look for specifics."

She finally sent him back with mixed feelings. He
was arrogant, no doubt about it. But he was also com-
petent He shared her interests, but his pet theories
differed wildly from hers. He was possible, if there
were no other choices, but he wasn't what she was look-
ing for.

"Chria Chance is up next," CenCom said when she
reported she was ready for the next. "But you won't
like her."

"Why, because she's got a name that's obviously
assumed?" Neither CenCom nor the Academy cared
what you called yourself, provided they knew the iden-
tity you had been born with and the record that went
with it. Every so often someone wanted to adopt a
pseudonym. Often it was to cover a famous High Fami-
ly name—either because the bearer was a black sheep,
or because (rarely) he or she didn't want special treat-
ment But sometimes a youngster got a notion into his
or her head to take on a holostar-type name.

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Amu McCaffrey 6f Mercedes La&ey

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"No," CenCom replied, not bothering to hide his
amusement. "You won't like her because — well, you'll
see."

Chria's records were good, about like Garrison's —
with one odd note in the personality profile. Noncon-
formist, it said.

Well, there was nothing wrong with that. Pota and
Braddon were certainly not conformists in any sense.

But the moment that Chria stepped into the central
room, Tia knew that CenCom was right.

She wore her Academy uniform, all right — but it
was a specially tailored one. Made entirely of leather;
real leather, not synthetic. And she wore it entirely too
well for Tia to feel comfortable around her. For the
rest, she was rapier-thin, with a face like a clever fox
and hair cut aggressively short. Tia already felt
intimidated, and she hadn't even said anything yet!

Within a few minutes worth of questions, Chria
shook her head. "You're a nice person, Tia," she said
forthrightly, "and you and I would never partner well.
I'd run right over you, and you'd sit there in your
column, fuming and resentful, and you'd never say a
word." She grinned with feral cheer. "I'm a carnivore, a
hunter. I need someone who'll fight back! I enjoy a
good fight!"

"You'd probably have us go chasing right after
pirates," Tia said, a litde resentful already. "If there
were any in the neighborhood, you'd want us to look
for them!"

"You bet I would," Chria responded without shame.

A few more minutes of exchange proved to Tia that
Chria was right. It would never work. With a shade of
regret, Tia bade her farewell. While she liked a good
argument as well as the next person, she didn't like for
arguments to turn into shouting matches, which was
precisely what Chria enjoyed. She claimed it purged
tensions.

Well, maybe it did. And maybe that was why her
favorite form of music—to the exclusion of everything
else •— v/as opera. She was a fanatic, to put it simply,
And Tia—well—wasn't

But there was certainly a lot of emotion-purging and
carrying on in those old operas. She had the feeling
that Chria fancied herself as a kind of latter-day
Valkyrie.
Hoy-yo to-ho.

She reported her rejection to CenCom, with the
recommendation that she thought Chria Chance had
the proper mental equipment to partner a ship in the
Military Courier Service. "Between you, me, and the
airwaves," CenCom replied., "that's my opinion, too.
Bloodthirsty wench. Well, she'll get her chance.
Military got your classmate Pol, and he's just as bloody-
minded as she is. I'll see the recommendation goes in;
meanwhile, next up is Harkonen Carl-Ulbright,"

Carl was a disappointment. Average grades, and
while he was congenial, Tia knew that she would run
right over the top of Aim. He was shy, hardly ever ven-
tured an opinion, and when he did, he could be
induced to change it in an eye-blink. However —
"Carl," she said, just before he went to the lift, making
no effort to hide his discouragement. "My classmate
Raul is the XR One-Oh-Two-Nine. I think you two
would get along splendidly. I'm going to ask CenCom
to set up your very next interview with him — he was
just installed today and I know he hasn't got a brawn
yet. Tell him I sent you."

That cheered up the young man considerably. He
would be even more cheered when he learned that Raul
had a Singularity Drive ship. And Tia would bet that his
personality profile and Ratal's matched Co a hair. They'd
make a great team, especially when their job included
carrying VIP passengers. Neither of them would get in
the way or resent it if the VIPs ignored them.

86

AtmeMcCaffrey & Mercedes Lackey

"I got all that, Tia," CenCom said as soon as the boy
was gone. "Consider it logged. They ought to make
you a Psych; a Counselor, at least It was good of you to
think of Raid; none of us could come up with a match
for him, but we were trying to match him with
females."

If she'd had hands, she would have thrown them up.
"Become a Psych? Saints and agents of grace defend
us!" she quipped. "I thinknot\ Who's next?"

"Andrea Polo y De Gras," CenCom said. "You won't
Kke her, either. She doesn't want you."

"With the Polo y De Gras name, I'm not surprised,"
Tia sighed. "Wants something with a little more zing to
it than A and E, hmm? Would she be offended if I
agreed with her before she bothered to come out
here?"

"I doubt it," CenCom replied, "but let me check." A
pause, and then he came back. "She's very pleased,
actually. I think that she has something cooking with the
Family, and the strings haven't had time to get pulled yet
Piff. High Families. I don't know why they send their
children to Space Academy in the first place."

Tia felt moved to contradict him. "Because some of
them do very well and become a credit to the Services,"
she replied, with just a hint of reproach.

"True, and I stand corrected. Well, your last brawn-
candidate is the late Alexander Joli-Chanteu." The
cheer in his voice told her that he was making a bad
joke out of the situation.

"Late, hmm? That isn't going to earn hm any gold
stars in his Good-Bee Book," Ha said, a bit acidly. Her
parents' fetish for punctuality had set a standard she
expected those around her to match. Especially brawn-
candidates.

Well, lean at least go over his records. She scanned them
quickly and came up — confused. When Alexander
was good, he was very, very, good. And when he was

THESHIPWHOSEARCHED	s?

bad, he was abysmal. Often in the same subject. He
would begin a class with the lowest marks possible,
then suddenly catch fire, turn around, and pull a
miraculous save at the end of the semester. Erratic per-
formances, said his personality profile. Tia not only
agreed, she thought that the evaluator was under-
stating the case.

CenCom interrupted her confusion. "Whoop! He
got right by me! Here he comes, Tia, ready or not!"

Alexander didn't bother with the lift, he ran up the
stairs, arriving out of breath, with longish hair mussed
and uniform rumpled.

That didn't earn him any points either, although it
was better than Chria's leather.

He took a quick look around to orient himself, then
turned immediately to face the central column where
she was housed, a nicety that only Carl and Chria had
observed. It didn't matter, really, and a lot of shell-
persons didn't care, so long as the softpersons faced
one set of "eyes" at least — but Tia felt, as Moira did,
that it was more considerate of a brawn to face where
you were, rather than empty cabin.

"Hypatia, dear lady, I am most humbly sorry to be
late for this interview," he said, slowly catching his
breath. "My sensei engaged me in a game of Go, and I
completely lost all track of time."

He ran his blunt-fingered hand through his unruly
dark hair and grinned ruefully, little smile-crinkles
forming around his brown eyes. "And here I had a per-
fectly wonderful speech all memorized, about how
fitting it is that the lady named for the last librarian at
Alexandria and the brawn named for Alexander
should become partners — and the run knocked it
right out of my head!"

Well! He knows where my name came from! Or at least he
had the courtesy and foresight to look it up. Hmm. She con-
sidered that for a moment, then put it in the "plus"

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Anne McCaffrey &? Mercedes Lackey

column. He was not handsome, but he had a pleasant,
blocky sort of face. He was short — well, so was the
original Alexander, by both modern standards and
those of his own time. She decided to put his general
looks in the "plus" column too, along with his polite-
ness. While she certainly wasn't going to choose her
brawns on the basis of looks, it would be nice to have
someone who provided a nice bit of landscape.

"Minus," of course, were for being late and very
untidy when he finally did arrive.

"I think I canbring myself to forgive you," she said dryly.
"Although I'm not certainjust what exactly detained you."

"Ah—besides a hobby of ancient history, Terran his-
tory, that is, especially military history and strategy, I,
ah — I cultivate certain kinds of martial arts." He ran
his hand through his hair again, in what was plainly a
nervous gesture. "Oriental martial arts. One soft form
and one hard form. Tai Chi and Karate. I know most
people don't think that's at all necessary, but, well, A
and E Couriers are unarmed, and I don't like to think of
myself as helpless. Anyway, my sensei — that's a martial
arts Master — got me involved in a game of Go, and
when you're playing against a Master there is nothing
simple about Go." He bowed his head a moment and
looked sheepish. "I lost all track of time, and they had
to page me. I really am sorry about making you wait"

Tla wasn't quite sure what to make of that. "Sit down,
will you?" she said absently, wondering why, with this
fascination with things martial and military, he hadn't
shown any interest in the Military Services. "Do you
play chess as well?"

He nodded. "Chess, and Othello, and several com-
puter games. And if you have any favorites that 1 don't
know, I would be happy to learn them." He sat quietly,
calmly, without any of Garrison's fidgeting. In fact, it
was that very contrast with Garrison that made her
decide resolutely against that young man. A few months

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89

of fidgeting, and she would be ready to trank him to
keep him quiet.

"Why Terran history?" she asked, curiously. "That
isn't the kind of fascination I'd expect to find in a — a
space-jockey."

He grinned. It was a very engaging, lopsided grin.
"What, haven't you interviewed my classmate Chria
yet? Now there is someone with odd fascinations!"
Behind the banter, Tia sensed a kind of affection, even
though the tips of his ears went lightly red. "I started
reading history because I was curious about my name,
and got fascinated by Alexander's time period. One
thing led to another, and the next thing 7 knew, every
present I was getting was either a historical holotape or
a bookdisk about history, and I was actually quite
happy about the situation."

So he did know the origin of her name. "Then why
military strategy?"

"Because all challenging games are games of
strategy," he said. "I, ah — have a friend who's really a
big games buff, my best friend when I was growing up,
and I had to have some kind of edge on him. So I
started studying strategy. That got me into The Art of
War and that got me into Zen which got me into martial
arts." He shrugged. "There you have it. One neat
package. I think you'd really like Tai Chi, it's all about
stress and energy flow and patterns, and it's a lot like
Singularity mechanics and — "

"I'm sure," she interrupted, hauling him verbally
back by the scruff of his neck. "But why didn't you opt
for Military Service?"

"The same reason I studied martial arts — I don't
like being helpless, but I don't want to hurt anyone," he
replied, looking oddly distressed. "Both Tai Chi and
Karate are about never using a bit more force than you
need to, but Tai Chi is the essence of using greater force
against itself, just like in The Art of War, and—"

90

Anne McCaffrey & Mercedes Lackey

Once again she had to haul him back to the question.
He tended to go off on verbal tangents, she noticed. She
continued to ask him questions, long after the time she
had finished with the other brawns, and when she finally
let him go, it was with a sense of dissatisfaction. He was
the best choke so for, but although he was plainly both
sensitive and intelligent, he showed no signs at all of any
interest in fer field. In feet, she had seen and heard noth-
ing that would make her think he would be ready to help
her in any way with her private quest

As the sky darkened over the landing field, and the
spaceport lights came on, glaring down on her smooth
metal skin, she pondered all of her choices and couldn't
come up with a clear winner. Alex was the best — but
the rest were, for the most part, completely unsuitable.
He was obviously absentminded, and his care for his
person left a little to be desired. He wasn't exactly
slovenly, but he did not wear his uniform with the air of
distinction that Tia felt was required. In feet, on him it
didn't look much like a uniform at all, more like a suit of
comfortable, casual clothes. For the life of her, she
couldn't imagine how he managed thai.

His tendency to wander down conversational
byways could be amusing in a social situation, but she
could see where it could also be annoying to — oh — a
Vegan, or someone like them. No telling what kind of
trouble that could lead to, if they had to deal with AIs,
who could be very literal-minded.

No, he wasn't perfect. In feet, he wasn't even dose.

"XH One-Oh-Three-Three, you have an incoming
transmission," CenCom broke in, disturbing her
thoughts. "Hold onto your bustle, lady, it's the Wicked
Witch of the West, and I think someone just dropped a
house on her sister."

Whatever allusions the CenCom operator was
making were lost on Tia, but the sharply impatient
tone of her supervisor was not. "XH One-Oh-Three-

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91

Three, have you selected a brawn yet?" the woman
asked, her voice making it sound as if Tia had been
taking weeks to settle on a partner, rather than less
than a day.

"Not yet, Supervisor," she replied, cautiously. "So
far, to be honest, I don't think I've found anyone I can
tolerate for truly long stretches of time."

That wasn't exactly the problem, but Beta Gerold y
Caspian wouldn't understand the real problem. She
might just as well be Vegan. She made very few
allowances for the human vagaries ofbrawns and none
at all for shellpersons.

"Hypatia, you're wasting time," Beta said crisply.
"You're sitting here on the pad, doing nothing, taking
up a launch-cradle, when you could already be out on
courier-supply runs."

"I'm doing my best," Tia responded sharply. "But
neither you nor I will be particularly happy if I toss my
brawn out after the first run!"

"You've rejected six brawns that all our analysis
showed were good matches for your personality," Beta
countered. "AS you'd have to do is compromise a little."

Six of those were matches for me? she thought, aghast.
Which ones? The tofu-personalities? The Valkyrie warrior?
Spirits of space help me—Garrison ? I thought I was nicer and
—more interesting than that!

But Beta was continuing, her voice taking on the
tones of a cross between a policeman and a professorial
lecturer. "You know very well that it takes far too long
between visits for these Class One digs. It leaves small
parties alone for weeks and months at a time. Even
when there's an emergency, our ships are so few and so
scattered that it takes them days to reach people in
trouble — and sometimes an hour can make all the dif-
ference, let alone a day! We needed you out there the
moment you were commissioned!"

Tia winced inwardly.

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Arme McCaffrey &f Mercedes Lackey

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93

She'd have suspected that Beta went straight for the
sore spot deliberately, except that she knew that Beta
did not have access to her records. So she didn't know
Tia's background. The agency that oversaw the rights
of shellpersons saw to that — to make it difficult for
supervisors to use personal knowledge to manipulate
the shellpersons under their control. In the old days,
when supervisors had known everything about their
shellpersons, they had sometimes deliberately created
emotional dependencies in order to assure "loyalty"
and fanatic service. It was far, far too easy to manipulate
someone whose only contact to the real world was
through sensors that could be disconnected.

Still, Beta was right. IfFd had help earlier, I might not be
here right now. I might be in college, getting my double-docs
tike Mum, thinking about what postgraduate work I wanted to
do....

"I'll tell you what," she temporized. "Let me look
over the records and the interviews again and sleep on
it. One of the things that the schools told us over and
over was to never make a choice of brawns feeling
rushed or forced." She hardened her voice just a little.
"You don't want another Moira, do you?"

"All right," Beta said grudgingly. "But I have to warn
you that the supply of brawns is not unlimited. There
aren't many more for you to interview in this batch,
and if I have to boot you out of here without one, I will.
The Institute can't afford to have you sitting on the pad
for another six months until the next class graduates."

Go out without a brawn? Alone'? The idea had very little
appeal. Very little at all. In fact, the idea of six months
alone in deep space was frightening. She'd never had
to do without some human interaction, even on the digs
with Mum and Dad.

So while CenCom signed off, she reran her tapes of
the interviews and re-scanned information on the
twelve she had rejected. And still could not come up

wuth anyone she knew, without a shadow of a doubt,
that she'd like to call "friend."

Someone was knocking — quietly — on the closed
lift door. Tia, startled out of her brooding, activated the
exterior sensors. Who could that be? It wasn't even
dawn yet!

Her visitor's head jerked up and snapped around
alertly to face the camera when he heard it swivel to
center on him. The lights from the field were enough
for her to "see" by, and she identified him immediately.
"Hypatia, it's Alex," he whispered unnecessarily. "Can
I talk to you?"

Since she couldn't reply to him without alerting the
entire area to his clandestine and highly irregular visit,
she lowered the lift for him, keeping it darkened. He
slipped inside, and she brought him up.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded, once he
was safely in her central cabin. "This is not appropriate
behavior!"

"Hey," he said, "I'm unconventional. I like getting
things done in unconventional ways. The Art of War
says that the best way to win a war is never to do what
they expect you to do — "

"I'm sure," she interrupted. "That may be all very
well for someone in Military, but this is not a war, and I
should be reporting you for this." Tia let a note of
warning creep into her voice, wondering why she
wasn't doing just that.

He ignored both the threat and the rebuke. "Your
supervisor said you hadn't picked anyone yet," he said
instead. "Why not?"

"Because I haven't," she retorted. "I don't like being
rushed into things. Or pressured, either. Sit down."

He sat down rather abruptly, and his expression
turned from challenging to wistful. "I didn't thrnk you'd
hold my being late against me," he said plaintively. "I

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Anne McCaffrey &? Mercedes Lackey

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95

thought we hit it off pretty well. When your supervisor
said you'd spent more time with me than any of the other
brawns, I thought for sure you'd choose me! What's
wrong with me? There must be something! Maybe
something I can change!"

"Well — I — " She was taken so aback by his blunt-
ness, and caught unawares by his direct line of
questioning, that she actually answered him. "I expect
my brawns to be punctual — because they have to be
precise, and not being punctual implies carelessness,"
she said. "I thought you looked sloppy, and I don't like
sloppiness. You seemed absentminded, and I had to
keep bringing you back to the original subject when we
were talking. Both of those imply wavering attention,
and that's not good either. I'll be alone out there with
my brawn, and I need someone I can depend on to do
his job."

"You didn't see me at my best," he pointed out. "I
was distracted, and I was thrown completely off-center
by the feet that I had messed up by being late. But that
isn't all, is it?"

"What do you mean by that?" she asked, cautiously.

"It wasn'tjust that I was — less than perfect. You have
a secret... something you really want to do, that you
haven't even told your supervisor." He eyed the
column specula tively, and she found herself taken
completely by surprise by the accuracy of his guess. "I
don't match the profile of someone who might be inter-
ested in helping you with that secret. Right?"

His expression turned coaxing. "Come on, Hypatia,
you can tell me," he said. "I won't tattle on you. And I
might be able to help! You don't know that much about
me, just what you got in an hour of talking and what's
in the short-file!"

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said
lamely.

"Oh, sure you do. Come on, every brainship wants

to buy her contract out—no matter what they say. And
every ship has a hobby-horse of her own, too. Barclay
secretly wants to chase pirates all over known space like
a holo-star, Leta wants to be the next big synthcom
composer, even quiet old Jerry wants to buy himself a
Singularity Drive just so he can set interstellar records
for speed and distance!" He grinned. "So what's your
little hidden secret?"

She only realized that she'd been manipulated when
she found herself blurting out her plans for doing
some amateur archeological sleuthing on the side, and
both the fact thats/tf wanted a bit of archeological glory
for herself, and that she expected to eventually come
up with something worth a fair number of credits
toward her buy-out. She at least kept back the other
wish; the one about finding the bug that had bitten her.
By now, the three desires were equally strong, for read-
ing of her parents' success had reawakened all the old
dreams of following in Pota's footsteps, dealing with
Beta had given her more than enough of being some-
one else's contract servant, and her studies ofbrainship
chronicles had awakened a new fear — plague. And
what would happen if the bug that paralyzed her got
loose on a planetarywide scale?

As she tried to cover herself, she inadvertently
revealed that the plans were a secret held successfully
not only from her CenCom supervisors but from
everyone she'd ever worked with except Moira.

"It was because I thought that they'd take my deter-
mination as something else entirely," she confessed. "I
thought they'd take it as a fixation, and a sign ofinstability."

All through her confession, Alex stayed ominously
silent. When she finished, she suddenly realized that
she had just put him in a position to blackmail her into
taking him. All he had to do was threaten to reveal her
fixation, and she'd be decommissioned and put with a
Counselor for the next six months.

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97

But instead of saying anything, he began laughing.
Howling with laughter, in fact. She waited in confusion
for him to settle down and tell her what was going on.

"You didn't look far enough into my records, lovely
lady," he said, calming down and wiping his eyes. "Oh,
my. Call up my file, why don't you. Not the Academy
file; the one with my application for a scholarship in it"

Puzzled, she linked into the CenCom net and accessed
Alex's public records. "Look under 'hobbies,' " he
suggested.

And there it was. Hobbies and other interests.

Archeology and Xenology.

She looked further, without invitation, to his class
records. She soon saw that in lower schools, besides
every available history class, he had taken every
archeological course he could cram into a school day.

She wished that she had hands so that she could rub
her temples; as it was, she had to increase her nutrients
a tad, to rid herself of a beginning headache.

"See?" he said. "I wouldn't mind my name on a
paper or two myself. Provided, of course, that there
aren't any curses attached to our findings! And — well,
who couldn't use a pile of credits? I would very much
like to retire from the Service with enough credit to buy
myself—oh, a small planetoid."

"But — why didn't you apply to the university?" she
asked. "Why didn't you go after your degree?"

"Money," he replied succinctly, leaning back in his
seat and steepling his fingers over his chest, "Dinero.
Cash. Filthy lucre. My family didn't have any — or
rather, they had just enough that I didn't qualify for
scholarships. Oh, I could have gotten a Bachelor's
degree, but those are hardly worth bothering about in
archeology. Heck, Hypatia,)i0w know that! You know
how long it takes to get one Doctorate, too — four years
to a Bachelor's, two to a Master's, and then years and
years anA years of field work before you have enough

material to do an original dissertation. And a working
archeologist, one getting to go out on Class One digs or
heading Class Two and Three, can't just have one
degree, he has to have a double-doc or a quad-doc." He
shook his head, sadly. "I've been an armchair hobbyist
for as long as I've been a history buff, dear lady, but that
was all that I could afford. Books and papers had to suf-
fice for me."

"Then why the Academy?" she asked, sorely puzzled.

"Good question. Has a complicated answer." He lick-
ed his lips for a moment, thinking, then continued.
"Say I got a Bachelor's in Archeology and History. I
could have gotten a bottom-of-the-heap clerking job at
the Institute with a Bachelor's — but if I did that, I
might as well go clerk anywhere else, too. Clerking jobs
are all the same wherever you go, only the jargon
changes, never the job. But I could have done that, and
gotten a work-study program to get a Master's. Then I
might have been able to wangle a research assistant
post to someone, but I'd be doing all of the dull stuff.
None of the exploration; certainly none of the puzzle-
solving. That would be as far as I could go; an RA job
takes too much time to study for a Doctorate. I'd have
been locked inside the Institute walls, even if my boss
went out on digs himself. Because when you need
someone to mind the store at home, you don't hire
someone extra, you leave your RA behind."

"Oh, I see why you didn't do that," she replied. "But
why the Academy?"

"Standards for scholarships to the Academy are — a
little different," he told her. "The Scholarship Commit-
tees aren't just looking for poor but brilliant people —
they're looking for competent people with a particular
bent, and if they find someone like that, they do what it
takes to get him. And the competition isn't as intense;
there are a lot more scholarships available to the
Academy than there are to any of the university

98

AmteMeCaffrey& Mercedes Lackey

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

99

Archeology and History Departments I could reach.
All two of them; I'd have had to go to a local university; \
couldn't afford to go off-planet. Space Academy pays
your way to Central; university History scholarships
don't include a travel allowance. I figured if I couldn't
go dig up old bones on faraway worlds, I'd at least see
some of diose faraway worlds. If 1 put in for A and E I'd
even get to watch some of the experts at work. And
while I was at it, I might as well put in for brawn train-
ing and see what it got me. Much to my surprise, my
personality profile matched what they were looking
for, and I actually found myself in brawn training, and
once I was out, I asked to be assigned to A and E."

"So, why are you insisting on partnering me?" she
asked, deciding that if he had manipulated her, she was
going to be blunt with him, and if he couldn't take it, he
wasn't cut out to partner her. No matter what he thought
Hmm, maybe frankness could scare him away. . . .

He blinked. "You really don't know? Because you
are you," he said. "It's really appallingly simple. You
have a sparkling personality. You don't try to flatten
your voice and sound like an AI, the way some of your
classmates have. You aren't at all afraid to have an
opinion. You have a teddy bear walled up in your
central cabin like a piece of artwork, but you don't talk
about it. That's a mystery, and I love mysteries, espe-
cially when they imply something as personable as a
teddy bear. When you talk, I can hear you smiling,
frowning, whatever. You're a she\\person, Hypatia, with
the emphasis onperson. I like you. I had hoped that you
would like me. I figured we could keep each other
entertained for a long, long time."

Well, he'd out-blunted her, and that was a fact And
— startled her. She was surprised, not a Utde flattered,
and getting to think that Alex might not be a bad choice
as a brawn after all. "Well, I like you," she replied
hesitantly, "but ..."

"But what?" he asked, boldly. "What is it?"
"I don't like being manipulated," she replied. "And
you've been doing just that: manipulating me, or

trying-"
He made a face. "Guilty as charged. Part of it is just

something I do without thinking about it I come from
a low-middle-dass neighborhood. Where I come from,
you either charm your way out of something or fight
your way out of it, and I prefer the former. I'll try not to
do it again,"

"That's not all," she warned. "I've got — certain
plans — that might get in the way, if you don't help
me." She paused for effect. "It's about what I want to
hunt down. The homeworld of the Salomon-Kildaire
Entities."

"The EsKays?" he replied, sitting up, ramrod-
straight "Oh, my—if this weren't real life I'd think you
were telepathic or something! The EsKays are my
favorite archeological mystery! I'm dying to find out
why they'd set up shop, then vanish! And if we could
find the homeworld — Hypatia, we'd be holo-stars!
Stellar achievers!"

Her thoughts milled about for a moment. This was
very strange. Very strange indeed.

"I assume that part of our time Out would be spent
checking things out at the EsKay sites?" he said, his
eyes warming. "Looking for things the archeologists
may not find? Looking for more potential sites?"

"Something like that," she told him. "That's why I
need your cooperation. Sometimes I'm going to need a
mobile partner on this one."

He nodded, knowingly. "Lovely lady, you are look-
ing at him," he replied. "And only too happy to. If
there's one thing I'm a sucker for, it's a quest And this
is even better, a quest at the service of a lady!"

"A quest?" she chuckled a litde. "What, do you want
us to swear to find the Holy Grail now?"

100

Amu McCaffrey &f Merc&tes Lackey

THESHIP WHO SEARCHED

101

"Why not?" he said lightly. "Here — I'll start." He
stood up, faced not her column but Ted E. Bear in his

solemnly swear that I shalljoin brainship Hypatia One-
Oh-Three-Three in a continuing and ongoing search
for the homework! of the Salomon-Kildaire Entities. I
swear that this will be a joint project for as long as we
have a joint career. And I swear that I shall give her all
the support and friendship she needs in this search, so
help me. So let it be witnessed and sealed by yon bear."

Tia would have giggled, except that he looked so
very solemn.

"All right," he said, when he sat down again. "What
about you?"

What about her? She had virtually accepted him as
her brawn, hadn't she? And hadn't he sworn himself
into her service, like some kind of medieval knight?

"All right," she replied. "I, Hypatia One-Oh-Three-
Three, do solemnly swear to take Alexander
Joli-Chanteu into my service, to share with him my
search for the EsKay homeworld, and to share with
him those rewards both material and immaterial that
come our way in this search. I pledge to keep him as my
brawn unless we both agree mutually to sever the con-
tract I swear it by—by Theodore Edward Bear."

He grinned, so wide and infectiously, that she wished
she could return it. "I guess we're a team, then," she
said.

"Then here — "he lifted an invisible glass " — is to
our joint career. May it be as long and fruitful as the
Cades'."

He pretended to drink, then to smash the invisible
glass in an invisible fireplace, little guessing thatlia's
silence was due entirely to frozen shock.

The Cades? How could he—

But before she vocalized anything, she suddenly

realized that he could not possibly have known who
and what she really was.

Tlie literature on the Cades would never have men-
tioned their paralyzed daughter, nor the tragedy that
caused her paralysis. That simply wasn't done in
academic circles, a world in which only facts and
speculations existed, and not sordid details of private
lives. The Cades weren't stellar personalities, the kind
people made docudramas out of. There was no way he
could have known about Hypatia Cade.

And once someone went into the shellperson pro-
gram, their last name was buried in a web of eyes-only
and fail-safes, to ensure that their background remained
private. It was better that way, easier to adjust to being
shelled. The unscrupulous supervisor could take
advantage of a shellperson's background for manipula-
tion, and there were other problems as well. Brainships
were, as Professor Brogen had pointed out, valuable
commodities. So were their cargoes. The ugly pos-
sibilities of using familial hostages or family pressures
against a brainship were very real. Or using family ties to
lure a ship into ambush....

But there was always the option for the shellperson
to tell trusted friends about who they were. Trusted
friends—and brawns.

She hesitated for a moment, as he saluted Ted.
Should she tell him about herself and avoid a painful
gaffe in the future?

No. No, I have to learn to live with it, iffrngoingto keep
chasing the EsKays. If he doesn't say anything, someone else
mill. Mum and Dad may have soured on the EsKay project
because of me, but their names are still linked with it. And be-
sides—it doesn'tww&er The EsKays are mine, now. And Tm
not a Cade anymore, even if I do find the homeworld. I won't be
listed in the literature as Hypatia Cade, but as Hypatia One-
Oh-Tkree-Tkree. A brainship. Part of the AH team—

She realized what their team designation looked like.

102

Anne McCaffrey £# Mercedes Lackey

"Do you realize that together our initials are—*

*"Ah'?" he said, pronouncing it like the word.
"Actually, I did, right off. I thought it was a good omen.
Not quite 'eureka,1 but dose enough!"

"Hmm," she replied. "It sounds like something a
professor says when he thinks you're full of lint but he
can't come up with a refutation!''

"You have no romance in your soul," he chided
mockingly. "And speaking of romance, what time is it?"

"Four thirty-two and twenty-seven point five nine
seconds," she replied instandy. "In the morning, of
course."

"Egads," he said, and shuddered. "Oh-dark-
hundred. Let this be the measure of my devotion, my
lady. I, who never see the sun rise if I can help it, actually
got -up at/oar in the mommg to talk to you."

"Devotion, indeed," she replied with a laugh. "All
right, Alex — I give in. You are hereby officially my
brawn. I'm Tia, by the way, not Hypatia, not to you.
But you'd better sneak back to your dormitory and
pretend to be surprised when they tell you I picked
you, or we'll both be in trouble."

"Your wish, dearest Tia, is my command," he said,
rising and bowing. "Hopefully I can get past the gate-
guard going out as easily as I got past going in."

"Don't get caught," she warned him. "I can't bail you
out, not officially, and not yet Right now, as my super-
visor told me so succinctly, I am an expensive drain on
Institute finances."

He saluted her column and trotted down the stair,
ignoring the lift once again.

Well, at least he'll keep in shape.

She watched him as long as she could, but other
ships and equipment intervened. It occurred to her
then that she could listen in on the spaceport security
net for bulletins about an intruder—

She opened the channel, but after a half an hour

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

103

passed, and she heard nothing, she concluded that he
must have made it back safely.

The central cabin seemed very lonely without him.
Unlike any of the others — except, perhaps, Chria
Chance — he had filled the entire cabin with the sheer
force of his personality.

He was certainly lively enough.

She waited until oh-six-hundred, and then opened
her line to CenCom. There was a new operator on, one
who seemed not at all curious about her or her doings;
seemed, in feet, as impersonal as an AI. He brought up
Beta's office without so much as a single comment

As she halfway expected, Beta was present And the
very first words out of the woman's mouth were, "Well?
Have you picked a brawn, or am I going to have to trot
the rest of the Academy past you?"

Hypatia stopped herself from snapping only by an
effort. "I made an all-night effort at considering the
twelve candidates you presented, Supervisor," she said
sharply. "I went to the considerable trouble of access-
ing records as far back as lower schools."

Only a little fib, she told herself. I did check Alex, after all.

"And?" Beta replied, not at all impressed.

"I have selected Alexander Joli-Chanteu. He can
come aboard at any time. I completed all my test-flight
sequences yesterday, and I can be ready to lift as soon as
CenCom gives me clearance and you log my itinerary."
There, she thought, smugly. One in your eye, Madame
Supervisor, fll wager you never thought fd be that efficient.

"Very good, AH-One-Oh-Three-Three," Beta
replied, showing no signs of being impressed at all. "I
wouldn't have logged Alexander as brawn if I had been
in your shell, though. He isn't as ... professional as I
would like. And his record is rather erratic."

"So are the records of most genius-class intellects,
Supervisor," Tia retorted, feeling moved to defend her
brawn. "As I am sure you are aware." And you aren't in

104

Anne McCaffrey & Mercedes Lackey

my shell, lady, she thought, with resentment at Beta's
superior tone smoldering in her, until she altered the
chemical feed to damp it. I mill make my own decisions, and
I will thank you to keep that/irmly in mind.

"So they say, AH-One-Oh-Three-Three," Beta
replied impersonally. "I'll convey your selection to the
Academy and have CenCom log in your flight plan and
advise you when to be ready to lift immediately."

With that, she logged off. But before Tia could feel
slighted or annoyed with her, the CenCom operator
came back on.

"AH-One-Oh-Three-Three — congratulations!" he
said, his formerly impersonal voice warming with
friendliness. "I just wanted you to know before we got
all tangled up in official things that the operators here
all think you picked a fine brawn. Me, especially."

Tia was dumbfounded. "Why — thank you," she
managed. "But why — "

The operator chuckled. "Oh, we handle all the
cadets' training-flights. Some of them are real pains in
the orifice — but Alex always has a good word and he
never gripes when we have to put him in a holding pat-
tern. And — well, that Donning character tried to get
me in trouble over a near-miss when he ignored what I
told him and came in anyway. Alex was in the pattern
behind him — he saw and heard it all. He didn't have to
log a report in my defense, but he did, and it kept me
from getting demoted."

"Oh," Tia replied. Now, that was interesting. Wit-
nesses to near misses weren't required to come forward
with logs of the incident — and in fact, no one would
have thought badly of Alex if he hadn't. His action
might even have earned him some trouble with
Donning....

"Anyway, congratulations again. You won't regret
your choice," the operator said. "And — stand by for
compressed data transmission — "

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

105

As her orders and flight-plan came over the comlink,
Tia felt oddly pleased and justified. Beta did not like her
choice of brawns. The CenCom operators did.

Good recommendations, both.

She began her pre-flight check with rising spirits,
and it seemed to her that even Ted was smiling. Just a

little.
Allright Universe, brace yourself. Here we come!

CHAPTER FOUR

"All right, Tia-my-love, explain what's going on
here, in words of one syllable," Alex said plaintively,
when Tia got finished with tracing the maze of orders
and counter-orders that had interrupted their routine
round of deliveries to tiny two- to four-person
Exploratory digs. "Who's on first?"

"And What's on second," she replied absentmindedly.
Just before leaving she'd gotten a datahedron on old-
Terran slang phrases and their derivation; toying with the
idea of producing that popular-science article. If it got
published on enough nets, it might well earn her a tidy lit-
de bit of credit—and no amount of credit, however small,
was to be scorned. But one unexpected side-effect of scan-
ning it was that she tended Co respond with the punch fines
ofjokessoold they were mummified.

Though now, at least, she knew what the CenCom
operator had meant by "hang onto your bustle" and
that business about the wicked witch who'd had a
house dropped on her sister.

"What?" Alex responded, perplexed. "No, never
mind. I don't want to know. Just tell me whose orders
we're supposed to be following. I got lost back there in
the fifth or sixth dispatch."

"I've got it all straight now, and it's dual-duty," she
replied. "Institute, with backup from Central,
although they were countermanding each other in the
first four or five sets of instructions. One of the Excava-
tion digs hasn't been checking in. Went from their
regular schedule to nothing, not even a chirp."

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

107

"You don't sound worried," Alex pointed out.

"Well, I am, and I'm not," she replied, already cal-
culating the quickest route through hyperspace, and
mentally cursing the fact that they didn't have Sin-
gularity Drive. But then again, there wasn't a
Singularity point anywhere near where they wanted to
go. So the drive wasn't the miracle of instantaneous
transportation some people claimed it was. Hmm, and
some brainships too, naming no names. All very well if there
were Singularity points littering the stellarscape like
stars in the Core, but out here, at this end of the galactic
arm, stars were close, but points were few and far
between. One reason why the Institute hadn't opted
for a more expensive ship. "If it were an Exploratory
dig like my — like we've been trotting supplies and
mail to, I would worry a lot. They're horribly vul-
nerable. And an Evaluation dig is just as subject to
disaster, since the maximum they can have is twenty
people. But a Class Three—Alex, this one had a com-
plement of two hundred! That's more that enough
people to hold off any trouble!"

"Class Three Excavation sites get a lot of graduate
students, don't they?" Alex said, while she locked
things down in her holds for takeoff with help from the
servos. Pity the cargo handlers hadn't had time to stow
things properly.

"Exactly. They provide most of the coolie labor when
there aren't any natives to provide a work force — that's
why the Class Three digs have essentially the same setup
as a military base. Most of the personnel are young,
strong, and they get the best of the equipment This one
has — " she quickly checked her briefing " — one
hundred seventy-eight people between the ages of twen-
ty-five and thirty-five. That's plenty to set up perimeter
guards."

Alex's fingers raced across the keypads in front of him,
calling up data to her screens. "Hmm. No really nasty

108

Ame McCaffrey £*? Mercedes Lackey

native beasties. Area declared safe. And — my. Fully
armed, are we?" He glanced over at the column. "I had
no idea archeologists were such dangerous beings! They
never told me that back in secondary school!"

"Grrr," she responded. She flashed a close-up of the
bared fangs of a dog on one of the screens he wasn't
using. In die past several weeks she and Alex had spent
a lot of time talking, getting to know each other. By vir-
tue of her seven years spent mobile, she was a great
deal more like a softperson than any of her classmates,
and Alex wasytm to be around. Neither of them par-
ticularly minded the standard issue beiges of her
interior; what he had done, during the time spent in
FTL, was to copy the minimalist style of his senses
home, taking a large brush and some pure black and
red enamel, and copying one or two Zen ideographs
on the walls that seemed barest. She thought they
looked very handsome — and quiedy elegant

Of course, his cabin was a mess—but she didn't have
to look in there, and she avoided doing so as much as
possible.

In turn, he expressed delight over her "sparkling
personality." No matter what the counselors said, she
had long ago decided that she had feelings and emo-
tions and had no guilt over showing them to those she
trusted. Alex had risen in estimation from "partner" to
"trusted" in the past few weeks; he had a lively sense of
humor and enjoyed teasing her. She enjoyed teasing
right back.

"Pull in your fangs, wench," he said. "I realize that
the only reason they get those arms is because there are
no sentients down there. So, what's on the list ofThings
That Get Well-Armed Archeologists? 1 have the sinking
feeling there were a lot of things they didn't tell me
about archeology back in secondary school!"

"Seriously? It's a short list, but a nasty one." She
sobered. "Lock yourself in; I'm going to lift, and fast

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

109

Things are likely to rattle around." With drives
engaged, she pulled away from her launch cradle,
acknowledged Traffic Control and continued her con-
versation, all at once. "Artifact thieves are high on that
jjst—if you've got a big dig, you can bet that there are
things being found that are going to be worth a lot to
collectors. They'll come in, blast the base, land, kill
everyone left over that gets in their way, grab the loot
and lift, all within hours." Which was why the kidey was so
far from OUT dome, and why Mum and Dad told metogetinit
and stay in it if trouble came. "But normally they work an
area, and normally they don't show up anyplace where
Central has a lot of patrols. There haven't been any
thieves in that area, and it is heavily patrolled."

"So — what's next on the list?" Alex asked, one
screen dedicated to the stats on the dig, his own hands
busy with post-lift chores that some brawns would have
left to their brains. Double-checking to make sure all
the servos had put themselves away, for instance.
Keeping an eye on the weight-and-balance in the
holds. Just another example, she thought happily, of
what a good partner he was.

She was clear of the cradle and about to clear local
airspace. Nearing time to accelerate "like a scalded cat."
Now that's a phrase that's still useful.... "Next on the list is
something we don't even have to consider, and that's a
native uprising."

"Hmm, so I see." His eyes went from the secondary
screen where the data on the dig was posted and back
to the primary. "No living native sophonts on the con-
tinent. But I can see how it could be the Zulu wars all
over again."

He nodded, acknowledging her logic, and she was
grateful to his self-education in history.

"Precisely," she replied. "Throw enough warm
bodies at the barricades, and any defense will go down.
In a native uprising, there are generally hordes of

110

Anne McCaffrey 6f Mercedes Lackey

fervent fanatics willing to die in the cause and go
straight to Paradise. Accelerating, Alex."

He gave her a thumbs-up, and she threw him into
his seat. He merely raised an eyebrow at her column
and kept typing. "There must be several different
variations on that theme. Let's see — you could have
your Desecration of Holy Site Uprising, your Theft of
Ancient Treasures Uprising, your Palace Coup Upris-
ing, your Local Peasant Revolution Uprising. Uh-huh.
I can see it And when you've overrun the base, it's time
to line everyone up as examples of alien exploitation.
Five executioners, no waiting."

"They normally don't kill except by accident,
actually, or in the heat of the moment," she told him.
"Most native sophonts are bright enough to realize that
two hundred of Central Systems' citizens, a whole herd
of their finest minds and their dependents, make a
much better bargaining chip as hostages than they do
as casualties."

"Not much comfort to those killed in the heat of the
moment," he countered. "So, what's the next culprit
on the list?"

"The third, last, and most common," she said, a bit
grimly, and making no effort to control her voice-out-
put "Disease."

"Whoa, wait a minute — I thought that these sites
were declared free of hazard!" He stopped typing and
paled a little, as well he might. Plague was the bane of
the Courier Service existence. More than half the time
of every CS ship was spent in ferrying vaccines across
known space — and for every disease that was eradi-
cated, three more sprang up out of nowhere. Nor were
the brawns immune to the local plagues thatjust might
choose to start at the moment they planeted. "I thought
all these sites were sprayed down to a fare-thee-well
before they let anyone move in!"

"Yes, but that's the one I'm seriously concerned

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111

about" And not just because it was a bug that got me. "That,
my dear Alex, is what they don't tell you bright-eyed
young students when you consider a career in archeol-
ogy. The number one killer of xeno-archeologists is
disease.wA«d^7M«w^mwcn^fe5/or£ftaf7naite): "Viruses
and proto-viruses are sneaky sons-of-singularities; they
can hibernate in tombs for centuries, millennia, even in
airless conditions." She flashed up some Institute statis-
tics; the kind they didn't show the general public. There
was a thirty percent chance that a xeno-archeologist
would be permanently disabled by disease during his
career; a twenty percent chance that he would die. And a
one hundred percent chance that he would be seriously
ill, requiring hospitalization, from something caught on
a dig, at some point in his life.

"So the bug hibernates. Then when the intrepid
explorer pops the top off— " Alex looked as grim as

she felt

"Right Gotcha." She laughed, but it had a very flat
sound. "Well, sometimes it's been known to be fortuitous.
The Cades actually met when they were recovering from
Henderson's Chorea — ah—or so their biographies in
Who's Who say. There could be worse things than having
the Institute cover your tropic vacation."

"But mostly it isn't" His voice was as flat as her laugh

had been.

"Ye-es. One of my — close friends is Doctor Rennet
on the Pride of Albion. He's gotten to be a specialist in
diseases that get archeologists. He's seen a lot of nasty
variations over the years — including some really odd
opportunistic bugs that are not only short-lived after
exposure to air, but require a developing nervous sys-
tem in order to set up housekeeping."

"Developing — oh, I got it. A kid, or a fetus,
provided it could cross the placental barrier." He
shivered, and his expression was very troubled. "Brr,
that's a really nasty one."

112

Anne McCaffrey& Mercedes Lackey

"Verily, White Knight." She decided not to elaborate
on it. Maybe later. To let him know Fm not only outforfortune
and glory. "I just wanted you to be prepared when we
got there, which we will in — four days, sixteen hours,
and thirty-five minutes. Not bad, for an old-fashioned
FTL drive, I'd say." She'd eliminated the precise meas-
urements that some of the other shellpersons used
with their brawns in the first week — except when she
was speaking to another shellperson, of course. Alex
didn't need that kind of precision, most of the time;
when he did, he asked her for it. She had worried at
first that she might be getting sloppy—

No, I'm just accommodating myself to his world. I don't
mind. And when he needs precision, he lets me know in
advance.

"Well, let me see if I can think of some non-lethal
reasons for the dig losing communications — " He
grinned. "How about — 'the dinosaur ate my
transmitter*?"

"Cute." Now that their acceleration had smoothed and
they were out of the atmosphere, she sent servos snoop-
ing into his cabin, as was her habit whenever a week or so
went by, and he was at his station, giving her non-invasive
access. "Alex, don't you ever pick up your clothes?"

"Sometimes. Not when I'm sent hauling my behind
up the stairs with my tail on fire and a directive from CS
ordering me to report back to my ship immediately." He
shrugged, completely unrepentant. "I wouldn't even
have changed my clothes if that officious b— "

"Alex," she warned. "I'm recording, I have to.
Regulations." Ever since the debacle involving the
Nyota Five, all central cabin functions were recorded,
whenever there was a softperson, even if only a brawn,
present That was regulation even on AI drones. The
regs had been written for AI drones, in feet; and CS
administration had decided that there was no reason to
rewrite them for brainships — and every reason why

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113

they shouldn't. This way no one could claim "dis-
crimination," or worse, "entrapment."

"If that officious bully hadn't insisted I change to
uniform before lifting." He shook his head. "As if wear-
ing a uniform was going to make any difference in how
wellyKt handled the lift. Which was, as always, excel-
lent."

"Thank you." She debated chiding him on his untidy

nature and decided against it. It hadn't made any dif-
ference before, it probably wouldn't now. She just had
the servos pick up the tunic and trousers — wincing at
the ultra-neon purple that was currently in vogue—and
deposited them in the laundry receptacle.

And I'll probably have to put them away when they're clean,
too. No wonder they wanted him to change. Hmm. Wonder if I
dare "lose" them? Or have a dreadful accident that dyes them a

nice sober plum?

That was a thought to tuck away for later. "Getting
back to the dinosaur — com equipment breaks, and
even a Class Three dig can end up with old equipment
If the only fellow on the dig qualified to fix it happens
to be laid up with broken bones — in case you hadn't
noticed, archeologists fall down shafts and off cliffs a lot
—or double-pneumonia..."

"Good point." He finished his "housekeeping
chores" with a flourish and settled back in his chair.
"Say, Tia, they're all professorial types — do they ever
just get so excited they forget to transmit?"

"Brace yourself for FTL — " The transition to FTL
was nowhere near as distressing to softpersons as the
dive into a Singularity, but it required some warning.
Alex gripped the arms of the seat, and closed his eyes,
as she made the jump into hyperspace.

She never experienced more than a brief shiver —
tike ducking into a freezing-cold shower — but Alex always
looked a little green during transition. Fortunately, he
had no trouble in hyper itself.

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Anne McCaffrty 6? Mercedes Lafkey

And if I can ever afford a Singularity Drive, his records say
he takes those transitions pretty well....

Well, right now, that was little more than a dream.
She picked up the conversation where it had left off.
"That has happened on Class One digs and even Class
Two, but usually somebody realizes the report hasn't
been made after a while when you're dealing with a big
dig. Besides, logging reports constitutes publication,
and grad students need all the publication they can get
Still, if they just uncovered the equivalent of
Tutankhamen's tomb, they might all be so excited —
and busy documenting finds and putting them into
safe storage — that they've forgotten the rest of the
universe exists."

He swallowed hard, controlling his nausea. It
generally seemed to take his stomach a couple of
minutes to settle down. Maybe the reason it doesn't hit me is
because there's no sensory nerves to my stomach anymore....

But that only brought back unpleasant memories;
she ruthlessly shunted the thought aside.

"So — " he said finally, as his color began to return.
"Tell me why you aren't in a panic because they haven't
answered."

"Artifact thieves would probably have been spotted,
there aren't any natives to revolt, and disease usually
takes long enough to set in that somebody would have
called for help," she said. "And that's why CS wasn't
particularly worried, and why they kept countermand-
ing the Institute's orders. But either this expedition
has been out of touch for so long that even they think
there's something wrong, or they've got some informa-
tion they didn't give us. So we're going in."

"And we find out when we get there," Alex finished;
and there wasn't a trace of a smile anywhere on his face.

Tia brought them out of hyper with a deft touch that
rattled Alex's insides as little as possible. Once in orbit,

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115

she sent down a signal that should activate the team's
transmitter if there was anything there to activate. As
she had told Alex several days ago, com systems broke.
She was fully expecting to get no echo back.

Instead —

You are linked to Excavation Team Que-Zee-Five-Five-
Seven. The beacon's automatic response came instantly,
in electronic mode. Then came the open carrier wave.

"Alex, I think we have a problem," she said, carefully.

"Echo?" He tensed.

"Full echo — " She sent the recognition signal that
would turn on landing assistance beacons and alert the
AI that there was someone Upstairs—the AI was sup-
posed to open the voice-channel in the absence of
humans capable of handling the com. The AI came on-
line immediately, transmitting a ready to receive
instructions signal.

"Worse, they've got full com. I just got the AI

go-signal."

She blipped a compressed several megabytes of
instructions to give her control of all external and in-
ternal recording devices, override any programs
installed since the base was established, and give her
control of all sensory devices still working.

"Get the AI to give me some pictures," he said, all

business. "If it can."

"Coming up—ah, external cam three—this is right
outside the mess hall and—oh sheUerack—"

"I'll second that," Alex replied, just as grimly.

The camera showed them—somewhat fuzzily—a
scene that was anything but a pretty sight

There were bodies lying in plain view of the camera;
from the lack of movement they could not be live
bodies. They seemed to be lying where they fell, and
there was no sign of violence on them. Tia switched to
the next camera the AI offered; a view inside the mess
hall. Here, if anything, things were worse. Equipment

116

Amu McCaffrey &? Mercedes Lackey

and furniture lay toppled. More bodies were strewn
about the room.

A chill that had nothing to do with the temperature
in her shell held her in thrall. Fear, horror, helpless-
ness—

Her own private nightmares—

Tia exerted control over her internal chemistry with
an effort; told herself that this could not be the disease
that had struck her. These people were taken down
right where they stood or sat—

She started to switch to another view, when Alex
leaned forward suddenly.

*Tia, wait a minute."

Obediently, she held the screen, sharpening the
focus as well as the equipment, the four-second lag-to-
orbit, and atmospheric interference would allow. She
couldn't look at it herself

"There's no food," he said, finally. "Look — there's
plates and things all over the place, but there's not a
scrap of food anywhere."

"Scavengers?" she suggested. "Or whatever—*

Whatever killed them? But there are no signs of an
invasion, an attack from, outside—

He shook his head. "I don't know. Let's try another
camera."

This one was outside the supply building—and this
was where they found their first survivors.

If that's whatyau can callthem. Tia absorbed the incom-
ing signal, too horrified to turn her attention away.
There was a trio of folk within camera range: one
adolescent, one young man, and one older woman.
They paid no attention to each other, nor to the bodies
at their feet, nor to their surroundings. The adolescent
sat in the dirt of the compound, stared at a piece of
brightly colored scrap paper in front of him, and rock-
ed, back and forth. There was no sound pickup on
these cameras, so there was no indication that he was

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117

doing anything other than rocking in silence, but Tia
had the strange impression that he was humming
tunelessly.

The young man stood two feet from a fence and
shifted his weight back and forth from foot to foot,
swaying, as if he wanted to get past the fence and had
no idea how. And the older woman paced in an endless

circle.

All three of them were filthy, dressed in clothes that
were din-caked and covered with stains. Their faces
were dirt-streaked, eyes vacant; their hair straggled
into their eyes in ratty tangles. Tia was just grateful that
the cameras were not equipped to transmit odor.

"Tia, get me another camera, please," Alex
whispered, after a long moment

Camera after camera showed the same view; either
of bodies lying in the dust, or of bodies and a few sur-
vivors, aimlessly wandering. Only one showed anyone
doing anything different; one young woman had
found an emergency ration pouch and torn it open.
She was single-mindedly stuffing the ration-cubes into
her mouth with both hands, like —

"Like an animal," Alex supplied in a whisper. "She's
eating like an animal."

Tia forced herself to be dispassionate. "Not like an
animal," she corrected. "At least, not a healthy one."
She analyzed the view as if she were dealing with an
alien species. "No — she acts like an animal that's been
brain-damaged — or maybe a drug addict that's been
on something so long there isn't much left of his higher

functions."

This wasn't "her" disease. It was something else —
- deadly—but not what had struck her down. What she
felt was not exactly relief, but she was able to detach
herself from the situation, to distance herself a little.

You knew, sooner or later, you'd see a plague. This one is a
horror, but you knew this would happen.

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AnneMcCaffrey& Mercedes Lackey

"Zombies," AJex whispered, as another of the sur-
vivors plodded past without so much as a glance at the
woman eating, who had given up eating with her
hands and had shoved her face right down into the
torn-open radon pouch.

"You've seen too many bad holes," she replied
absently, sending the AI a high-speed string of instruc-
tions. She had to find out when this happened — and
how long these people had been like this.

It was too bad that the cameras weren't set to record,
because that would have told her a lot. How quickly the
disease—for a plague of some kind would have had an
incubation time — had set in, and what the initial
symptoms were. Instead, all she had to go on were the
dig's records, and when they had stopped making
them.

"Alex, the last recorded entry into the Al's database
was at about oh-two-hundred, local time, a week and a
half ago," she said. "It was one of the graduate students
logging in pottery shards. Then — nothing. No record
of illness, nothing in the med records, no one even
using a voice-activator to ask the AI for help. The mess
hall computer programmed the synthesizer to
produce food for a few meals, then something broke
the synthesizer."
"One of them," Alex hazarded.
"Probably." She looked for anything else in the
database and found nothing. "That's about all there is.
The AI has been keeping things going, but there's
been no interaction with it So forget what I said about
diseases taking several days to set in — it looks like this
one infected and affected everyone on the base be-
tween —oh—some time during the night, and dawn."
If she'd had a head, she would have shaken it. "I
can't imagine how something like that could happen to
everyone at the same time without someone at least
blurting a few words to a voice pickup!"

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119

"Unless .. . Tia, what if they had to be asleep? I
mean, there's things that happen during sleep, neuro
transmitters that initiate dream-sleep — " Alex looked
up from the screen, with lines of strain around his eyes.
"If they had to be asleep to catch this thing—"

"Or if the first symptom was sleep ..." She couldn't
help herself; she wanted to shiver with fear. "Alex, I
have to set down there. You can't do anything for those
people from up here."

"No argument" He strapped himself in. "Okay, lady
— get us down as fast as you can. There's one thing I
have to do, quick, before we lose any more."

She broke orbit with a sudden acceleration that
threw him into the back of his seat; he didn't bat an eye.
His voice got a little more strained, but that was all.

"I'll have to put on a pressure-suit and get into the
supplies; put out food and pans of water. They're starv-
ing and dehydrated. Spirits of space only know what
they've been eating and drinking all this time — could
be a lot of them died of dysentery, or from eating or
drinking something that wasn't food." He was thinking
out loud; waiting for Tia to put in her own thoughts, or
warn him if he was planning to do something really
stupid. "No matter what else we do, I have to do that"

"Open up emergency ration bags and leave pans of
the cubes all over the compound," she suggested, as
her outer skin heated up to a glowing red as she hit the^
upper atmosphere. "Do the same with the water. Like
you were feeding animals."

"I am feeding animals," he said, and his voice and
face were bleak. " I have to keep telling myself that. Or
I'll do something really, really stupid. You get a line
established to Kleinman Base, ASAP"

"Already in the works." A hyperwave comlink that
far wasn't the easiest thing to establish and hold —

But that was why she was a brainship, not an AI
drone.

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Anne McCaffrey &f Mercedes Lackey

"Hang on," she said, as she hit the first of the tur-
bulence. "It'sgoingtobeabumpyburndown!"

The camera and external mike on Alex's helmet
gave her a much clearer view of the survivors than Tia
really wanted. Of the complement of two hundred at
this base, no more than fifty survived, most of them
between the ages of fifteen and thirty.

They avoided Alex entirely, hiding whenever they
saw him — but they came out to huddle around the
pans of food and water he put out, stuffing food into
their faces with both hands. Alex had gotten three of
the bodies he'd found in their beds into die med-center,
and the diagnosis was the same in all three cases; com-
plete systemic collapse, which might have been stroke.
The rest — the ones that had not simply dropped in
their tracks — had died of dysentery and dehydration.
Of the casualties, it looked as if half of the dead had
keeled over with this collapse, all of them the oldest
members of the team.

After the third, Alex called a halt to it; instead he
loaded the bodies into the base freezer. Someone else
would have to come get them and deal with them. Tia
had recorded his efforts, but could not bring herself to
actually watch the incoming video.

He completed his grisly work and returned to caring
for the living. "Tia, as near as I can guess, this thing hits
people in one of two ways. Either you get a stroke or
something and die, or you turn into — that." She saw
whatever he was looking at by virtue of the feet that the
helmet-camera was mounted right over his forehead.
And "that" was something that had once been a human
boy, scrambling away out of sight.

"That seems like a good enough assumption for
now," she agreed. "Can you tell what happened with
the food situation? Are they so — far gone that they
can't remember how to get into basic supplies?"

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121

"That's about it," he agreed, wearily. "Believe it or
not, they can't even remember how to pop ration packs
_ they seem to have a vague memory of where the
food was stored, but they never even tried to open the
door to the supply warehouse." He trudged across the
compound to one of die pans he had set out It was al-
ready empty, without even crumbs. He poured
radon-cubes into it from a bag he carried under his
arm. She caught furtive movement at the edge of the
camera-view; presumably the survivors were waiting
for him to go away so that they could empty the pan
again. "When they found the emergency pouches they
tore them open, like that woman we watched. But a lot
of times, they don't even seem to realize that the pouch
has food in it."

"There's two kinds of victims; the first lot, who got hit
and died in their sleep or on the way to breakfast," he
continued, making his way to the next pan. "Then the
rest of them died of dehydration and dysentery
because they were eating half-rotten food."

"Those would go hand-in-hand, here," she replied.
"With nothing to stop the liquid loss through
dysentery, dehydration comes on pretty quickly."

"That's what I figured." He paused to fill another
pan. "There'd be more of them dead, of exposure and
hypothermia, except that the temperature doesn't
drop below twenty Celsius at night, or get above thirty
in the daytime. Shirtsleeve weather. Tia •— see when
this balmy weather pattern started, would you?"

"Right." He must have had an idea — and it didn't
take her more than a moment to interrogate the Al.
"About a week before the last contact. Does that sound
as suspicious to you as it does to me?"

"Yeah. Maybe something hatched." Alex scanned
the area for her, and she noted that there were a fair
number of insects in the air.

But native insects wouldn't bite humans — or would

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Anne McCaffrey fc? Mercedes Lackey

they? "Or sprouted — this could be a violent allergic
reaction, or some other kind of interaction with a mold
spore or pollen." Farfetched, but not entirely impossible.

"But why wouldn't the Class One team have
uncovered it?" he countered, filling another pan with
ration-cubes. "Kibble," the brawns called it. The basic
foodstuff of the Central System worlds; the
monotonous ration-bars handed out by the PTA to
client-planets cut up into bite-sized pieces. Tia had
never eaten it; her parents had always insisted on real
meals, but she had been told that while it looked,
smelled, and tasted reasonable, its very sameness
would drive you over the edge if you had to eat it for
very long. But every base had emergency pouches of
the stuff cached all over, and huge bags stockpiled in
the warehouse, in case something happened to the
food-synthesizers.

Those pouches must have been what kept the sur-
vivors going—until they ran out of pouches that were
easy to find.

The dig records were, fortunately, quite dear. "Got
the answer to your question — Class One dig was here
for winter, only — they found what they needed to
upgrade to Class Three within a couple of days of dig-
ging. They really hit a big find in the first test trench,
and the Institute pushed the upgrade through to take
advantage of the good weather coming."

"And initial Survey teams don't live here, they live on
their ships." Alex had a little more life in his voice.

"They were only here in the fell," she said. "There's
never been a human here during spring and summer."

"Tia, you put that together with an onset of this
thing after dark, and what do you get?"

"An insect vector?" she hazarded. "Nocturnal? I
must admit that the pattern for venomous and biting
insects is to appear after sunset"

"Sounds right to me. As soon as I get done filling the

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123

pans again, I'm going to go grab some bedding from
one of the victims' beds, seal it in a crate, and freeze it
Maybe it's something like a flea. Can you see if there's
anything in the Al med records about a rash of insect

bites?"

"Can do," she responded, glad to finally have some-
thing, anything, concrete to do.

The sun was near the horizon when Alex finished
boxing his selection of bedding and sealing it in a
freezer container. He came back out again after load-
ing the container into one of Tia's empty holds. She
saw to the sealing of the hold, while he went back out to
try and catch one of the Zombies — a name he had
tagged the survivors with over her protests.

She finally established the comlink while he was still
out in the compound, fruitlessly chasing one after
another of the survivors and getting nowhere. He was
weighted down with his pressure-suit; they were
weighted down by nothing at all and had the impetus
of fear. He seemed to terrify them, and they did not
connect the arrival of food in the pans with him, for
some reason.

"They act like I'm some kind of monster," he panted,
leaning over to brace himself on his knees while he
caught his breath. "Since they don't have that reaction
to each other, it has to be this suit that they're afraid of.
Maybe I should — "

"Stay in the suit," she said, fiercely. "You make one
move to take that suit off, and I'll sleepygas you!"

"Oh, Tia — " he protested.

"I'm not joking." She continued her conversation
with the base brain in rapid, highly compressed
databursts with horribly long pauses for the information
to transmit across hyperspace. "You stay in that suit!
We don't know what caused all this — "

Her tirade was interrupted by a dreadful howling
and the external camera bounced as Alex moved

124

Anne McCaffrey Erf Merceries Lackey

violently. At first she thought that something awful had
happened to Alex — but then she realized that the
sound came from his external suit-mike, and that the
movement of the camera had been caused by his own
violent start of surprise.

"What the — "he blurted, then recovered. "Hang on,
Tia. I need to see what this is, but it doesn't sound like
an attack or anything."

"Be careful," she urged fearfully. "Please — "

But he showed no signs of foolhardy bravery; in fact,
as the howling continued under the scarlet light of the
descending sun, he sprinted from one bit of cover to
another like a seasoned guerrilla-fighter.

"Fifty meters," Tia warned, taking her measurement
from the strength of the howls. "They have to be on the
other side of this building."

"Thanks." He literally crept on all fours to the edge
of the building and peeked around the corner.

Tia saw exacdy what he did, so she understood his
sharp intake of breath.

She couldn't count them, for they milled about too
much, but she had the impression that every survivor
in the compound had crowded into the corner of the
fence nearest the sunset. Those right at the fence dung
to it as they howled their despair to the sun; the rest
dung to the backs of those in front of them and did the
same.

Their faces were contorted with the first emotion Tia
had seen them display.

Fear.

"They're scared, Tia," Alex whispered, his voice
thick with emotions that Tia couldn't decipher.
"They're afraid. I think they're afraid that the sun isn't
going to come back."

That might have been the case — but Tia couldn't
help but wonder if their fear was due to something else
entirely. Could they have a dim memory that

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125

something terrible had happened to them in the hours
of darkness, something that took away their friends
and changed their lives into a living hell? Was that why
they howled and sobbed with fear?

When the last of the light had gone, they fell sudden-
ly silent—then, like scurrying insects, they dropped to
all fours and scuttled away, into whatever each, in the
darkness of his or her mind, deemed to be shelter. In a
moment, they were gone. All of them.

There was a strangled sob from Alex. And Tia shook
within her shell, racked by too many emotions to effec-
tively sort out

"You have two problems."

Tia knew the name to put to the feeling she got
when her next transmission from the base was not
from some anonymous CS doctor but from Doctor
Kenny.

Relief. Real, honest, relief.

It flooded her, making her relax, dealing her mind.
Although she could not speak directly with him, if
there was anyone who could help them pull this off, it
would be Doctor Kenny. She settled all of her con-
centration on the incoming transmission.

"You'll have to catch the survivors and keep them
alive — and you'll have to keep them from contaminat-
ing your brawn. After that, we can deal with symptoms
and the rest"

All right, that made sense.

"We went at this analyzing your subjects' behavior.
You were right in saying that they act in a very similar
fashion to brain-damaged simians."

This was an audio-only transmission; the video por-
tion of the signal was being used to carry a wealth of
technical data. Tia wished she could see Doctor
Kenny's face — but she heard the warmth and
encouragement in his voice with no problem.

126

Arme McCajfrey &Merced& Lackey

"We've compiled all the data available on any experi-
ments where the subjects' behavior matched your
survivors," Doctor Kenny continued. "Scan it and see if
anything is relevant. Tia, I can't stress this enough —.
no matter what you think caused this disease, don't let
Alexget out of that suit. I can't possibly say this too many
times. Now that he's gone out there, he's got a con-
taminated surface. I want you to ask him to stay in the
suit, sleep in the suit, eat through the suit-ports, use
the suit-facilities. I would prefer that he stayed out in
the compound or in your airlock even to sleep—every
time he goes in and out of the suit, in and out of your
lock, we have a chance for decontamination to fail. I
know you understand me."

Only too well, she thought, grimly, remembering all
that time in isolation.

"Now, we've come up with a general plan for you,"
Doctor Kenny continued. "We don't think that you'll
be able to catch the survivors, given the way they're
avoiding Alex. So you're going to have to trap them.
My experts think you'll be able to rig drop-traps for
them, using packing crates with field generators across
the front and rations for bait. The technical specs are
on the video-track, but I think you have the general
idea. The big thing will be not to frighten the rest each
time you trap one."

Doctor Kenny's voice echoed hollowly in the empty
cabin; she damped the sound so that it didn't sound so
lonely.

"We want one, two at most, per crate. We're afraid
that, bunched together, they might hurt each other,
fight over food — they're damaged, and we just don't
know how aggressive they might get. That's why we
want you to pack them in the hold in the crates. Once
you get them trapped, we want you to put enough
food and water in each crate to last the four days to base
— and Tia, at that point, leave them there. Don't do

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127

anything with them. Leave them alone. I trust you to
exercise your good sense and not give in to any tempta-
tion to intervene in their condition."

Doctor Kenny sighed, gustily. "We bandied around
the idea of tranking them — but they have to eat and
drink; four days knocked out might kill them. You
don't have the facilities to cold-sleep fifty people. So —
box them, hope the box matches their ideas of a good
place to hide, leave them with food and water and
shove them in the hold. That's it for now, Tia. Transmit
everything you have, and we'll have answers for you as
soon as we're able. These double-bounce comlinks
aren't as fast as we'd like, but they beat the alternative.
Our thoughts are with you."

The transmission ended, leaving her only with the
carrier-wave.

Now what? Owe Alex the bad news, I guess. And calculate
how many packing crates I can pack into my holds.

"Alex?" she called. "Are you having any luck tracking
down where the survivors are?"

"I've turned on all the exterior lights," Alex said. "I
hoped that I'd be able to lure some of them out into the
open, but it's no good." She activated his helmet-camera
and watched his gloved hand typing override orders into
the keyboard of the main AI console. Override orders
had to be put in by hand, with a specific set of override
codes, no matter how minor the change was — that was
to keep someone from taking over an AI with a shout or
two. "Right now I'm giving myself full access to every-
thing—I may not need it, but who knows?"

"I've got our first set of orders," she told him. "Do
you want to hear them?"

"Sure." Typing in a pressure-suit was no easy task,
and Tia did not envy him. 11 took incredible patience to
manage a normal keyboard in those stifiFgloves.

She retransmitted Doctor Kenny's message and
waited patiently for his response when she finished.

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Arnie MicCaffrey fc? Mercedes Lackey

"So I have to stay in the suit." He sighed gustily, "Oh,
well. It could be worse, I suppose. It could be two
weeks to base, instead of four days." He typed the last
few characters with a flourish and was rewarded by the
"Full Access, Voice Commands accepted" legend. "No
choice, right? Look, Tia, I know you're going to be
lonely, but if I have to stay in this suit, I might just as
well sleep out here."

"But — " she protested, " — what if they decide
you're an enemy or something?"

"What, the Zombies?" He snorted. "Tia, right now
they're all crammed into some of the darnedest nooks
and crannies you ever saw in your life. I couldn't pry
them out of there with a forklift 1 know where they all
are, but I'd have to break bones to get them. Their
bones. They're terrified, even with all the floodlights
on. No, they aren't going to come after me in the dark."

"All right," she agreed reluctantly. She knew he was
right; he'd be much more comfortable out there —
there was certainly more room available to him there.

Til be closer to the Zombies," he said wearily, "and I
can barricade myself in one of the offices, get enough
bedding from stores to make a reasonable nest I'll plug
the suit in to keep everything charged up, and you can
monitor the mike and camera. I snore."

"I know," she said, in a weak attempt to tease him.

"You would." He turned, and the camera tracked
what he was seeing. "Look, I'm here in the site
supervisor's office. There's even a real nice couch in
here and — " He leaned down and fiddled with the
underside of the piece of furniture. "Ah hah. As I
thought. There's a real bed in the couch. Bet the old
man liked to sneak naps. Look — "He panned around
the office. MNo windows. One door. A full-access ter-
minal. I'll be fine."

"All right, I believe you." She thought, quickly. "Ill
look over those plans for traps and transmit them to

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129

the AI, and 111 find out where everything you'll need is
stored. You can start collecting the team tomorrow."

What's left of them, she thought sadly. What isn't already
stored in the freezer.

"See what you can do about adding some sleepygas
to the equation," he suggested, yawning under his
breath. "If we can knock them out once they're in the
boxes, rather than trapping them with field gener-
ators, that should solve the problem of frightening the
others."

That was a good suggestion. A much better one than
Doctor KennyV If she had enough gas....

But wait; this was a fully-stocked station. There
might be another option. Crime did exist wherever
there were people, and mental breakdowns — some-
times it was necessary to immobilize someone for his
protection and the protection of others.

She interrogated the AI and discovered that, indeed,
there were several special low-power needlers in the
arms locker. And with them, full clips of anesthetic
needles.

"Alex," she said, slowly, "how good a shot are you?"

"When this is over, I'm requisitioning an ethological
tagging kit," she said fiercely, as Alex crouched on the
roof of the mess hall and waited for his subject's hunger
to overcome her timidity. She hesitated, just in front of
the crate — she smelled the food, and she wanted it,
but she was afraid to go inside after it. She swayed from
side to side, like one of the first three survivors they'd
seen; that swaying seemed to be the outward sign of
inner conflict.

"Why?" he asked. The woman stopped swaying and
was creeping, cautiously, into the crate. Alex wanted
her to be all the way inside before he darted her, both to
prevent the rest from seeing her collapse and to avoid
having to haul her about and perhaps hurt her.

130

Aime McCaffrey fe? Mercedes Lackey

"Because they have full bio-monitor contact-buttons
in them," she replied. "Skin adhesive ones. They're
normally put inside ears, or on a shaved patch."

After a bit more consultation with Kleinman Base and
Doctor Kenny, darting the survivors had been given full
approval — and since they were going to be out, a
modification in the setup had been arranged for. There
would be shredded paper bedding in the crates as well as
food and water—and each victim would wear a contact-
button glued to the spine between the shoulder blades
with surgical adhesive. Withjudirious ^programming, a
minimal amount of medical information could come
from that — heart rate, respiration, skin temperature.
Tia had reprogrammed the buttons; now it was her
brawn's turn to live up to his tide.

"I sure never thought my marksmanship would
ever be an asset," he said absently. The woman had
only a foot or so to go....

"I never thought I was going to be packing my hold
with canned archeologists." The packing crates would fit
— but only if they were stacked two deep. Alex had al-
ready set up the site machine shop servos to drill air holes
in all of the crates, and there would be an unbreakable
bio-luminescent lightstick in each. They were rated for a
week of use. Hopefully that much light would be enough
to keep their captives from panicking.

"That's a good girl," Alex crooned to the reluctant
Zombie. "Good girl. Smell the nice food? It's really
good food. You're hungry, aren't you?" The woman
took the last few steps in a rush and fell on the dish of
ration-cubes. Alex darted her in the same moment.

The trank took effect within seconds, and she didn't
even seem to realize that she'd been struck. She simply
dropped over on her side, asleep.

Alex left the needier up on the roof where he'd
rigged a sniper-post with a tripod to hold the gun
steady. He trotted down the access steps to the first

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131

floor and hurried to get out where he could be seen
before someone else smelled the food and came after it
As he burst out into the dusty courtyard, a hint of
movement at the edge of the camera-field told Tia
there was another Zombie lurking out there.

After many protests, she had begun calling the sur-
vivors "Zombies," too — it helped to think of them as
something other than humans. She admitted to Doctor
Kenny that without that distancing it was hard to keep
working without strong feelings getting in the way of
efficiency.

"That's all right, Tia," he soothed on his next trans-
mission. "Even I have to stop thinking of my patients as
people and start thinking of them as 'cases' or 'case
studies' sometimes. That's the nature of this business,
and we'll both do what we have to in order to get as
many of these people back alive as we can."

She would have liked to ask him if he'd ever thought
of her as a "case study," but she knew, in her heart of
hearts, that he probably had. But then, look what he
had done for her....

No, calling these poor people "Zombies" wasn't
going to hurt them, and it would keep her concentrat-
ing on what to do for them, and not on them.

Alex had been boxing Zombies all morning, and
now he had it down to a system. Wheeling out of the
warehouse, under the control of the Al, came a small
parade of servos laden with the supplies that would
keep the woman — hopefully — alive and healthy in
her crate for the next five or six days. A bag of finely
shredded paper, to make a thick nest on the bottom of
the box. A whole bag of radon-cubes. A big squeeze-
bottle of water. A tiny chemical toilet, on the off-chance
shewwig/ii remember how to use it The bio-luminescent
lightstick. Inside of fifteen minutes, Alex had his setup.
The big bottle of water was strapped to one wall, the
straps glue-bonded in place, the bottle bonded to the

132

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133

straps. The toilet was bonded to the floor in the corner
of the six foot by six foot crate. The bag of ration-cubes
was opened at the top, and strapped and bonded into
the opposite corner. Paper was laid in a soft bed over
the entire floor, and the unconscious woman rolled
onto it, with the contact-button glued to her back.
Lastly, the bio-luminescent tube was activated and
glue-bonded to the roof of the crate, the side brought
up and fastened in place, and the crate was ready for
the loader.

That was Tia's job; she brought the servo-forklift in
from the warehouse under her control rather than the
AI's. Alex did not trust the AI to have the same fine con-
trol that Tia did. The lift bore the now-anonymous
crate up her ramp, and she stored it with the rest, piled
not two but three high and locked in place. Each crate
was precisely eight inches from the ones next to it, to
allow for proper ventilation on four sides. There were
twelve crates in the hold now. They hoped to have
twelve more before nightfall. If all went well

Thirty minutes for each capture....

They couldn't have done it if not for Tia's multi-
tasking abilities and all the servos under her control.
Right now, a set of servos were setting up crates all over
the compound, near the hiding places of the Zombies.
The Zombies seemed just as frightened of the servos as
they were of Alex in his suit By running the servos all
over the compound, they managed to send every one
of the Zombies into hiding. They ran servos around
each hiding place until they were ready to move to that
area for darting and capture. By now, the Zombies
were getting hungry, which was all to the good, so far as
Alex and Tia were concerned. One trap was being
baited now — and Alex was on his way to the hidden
sniper position above it. Meanwhile, the rest of the ser-
vos were patrolling the compound except in the area of
that baited crate, keeping the Zombies pinned down.

A- second hair-raising moment had occurred at
dawn, bringing Alex up out of his bed with a scream of
kis own. The Zombies had gathered to greet the rising
sun with another chorus of howls, although this time
they seemed more — well, not joyous, but certainly
there was no fear in the Zombie faces.

Once the first servo appeared, and frightened the
Zombies into hiding again, the final key to their cap-
ture plan was in place.

They would catch as many of the Zombies as possible
during the daylight hours. Alex had marked their
favorite hiding places last night, and by now those
patrolling servos had those that were not occupied block-
ed off. More crates would be left very near those
blocked-off hiding holes. Would they be attractive
enough for more of the Zombies to hide in them? Alex
thought so. Tia hoped he was right—for every Zombie
cowering in a crate meant one more they could dart and
pack up — one more they would not have to catch
tomorrow.

One less half-hour spent here. If they could keep up
the pace—if the Zombies didn't get harder to catch.

Alex kept up a running dialogue with her, and she
sensed that he was as frightened and lonely as she was,
but was determined not to show it. He revealed a lot,
over the course of the day; she built up a mental pic-
ture of a young man who had been just different
enough that while he was mildly popular—or at least,
not unpopular — he had few close friends. The only
one who he really spoke about was someone called Jon
— the chess and games player he had mentioned
before. He spent a lot of time with Jon — who had
helped him with his lessons when he was younger, so
Tia assumed that Jon must have been older than Alex.
Older or not, Jon had been, and still was, a friend.
There was no mistaking the warmth in Alex's voice
when he talked about Jon; no mistaking the pleasure

134

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135

he felt when he talked about the message of con-
gratulation Jon had sent when he graduated from the
academy—

Or the laughter he'd gotten from the set of "brawn
jokes" Jon had sent when Tia picked Alex as her
partner.

Well, Doctor Kenny, Anna, and Lars were my friends —
and still arc,. Sometimesage doesn'tmake much of'a difference.

"Hey, Alex?" she called. He was waiting for another
of the timid Zombies to give in to hunger. The dock was
running.

"What?"

"What do you call a brawn who can count past ten?"

"I don't know," he said good-naturedly. "What?"

"Barefoot''

He made a rude noise, then sighted and pulled the
trigger. One down, how many more to go?

They had fifty-two Zombies packed in the hdd, and one
casualty. One of the Zombies had not survived the darting;
Alexhad gone into acute depression over thatdeath, and it
had taken Ha more than an hour to talk him out of it She
didn't dare tell him then what those contact-buttons
revealed; some of their passengers weren't thriving well.
Tbe heart rates were up, probably with fear, and she heard
whimpering and wailing in the hold whenever there was
no one else in it but the Zombies. The moment any of the
servos or Alex entered the hold, the captives went utterly
silent Out of tear, Ha suspected.

The last Zombie was in the hold; the hold was sealed,
and Tia had brought the temperature up to skin-heat
The ventilators were at full-strength. Alex had just
entered the main cabin.

And he was reaching for his helmet-release.

"Don't crack your suit," she snapped. How could she
have forgotten to tell him? Had she? Or had she told
him, and he had forgotten?

"What?" he said — then—"Oh, decom it I forgot1*

She restrained herself from saying what she wanted
to. "Doctor Kenny said you have to stay in the suit.
Remember? He thinks that the chance we might have
missed something in decontamination is too much to
discount He doesn't want you to crack your suit until
you're at the base. All right?"

"What if something goes wrong for the Zombies?" he
asked, quietly. "Tia, there isn't enough room in that
hold for me to climb around in the suit"

"We'll worry about that if it happens," she replied
firmly. "Right now, the important thing is for you to get
strapped down, because their best chance is to get to
Base as quickly as possible, and I'm going to leave
scorch-marks on the ozone layer getting there."

He took the unsubtle hint and strapped himself in;
Tia was better than her word, making a tail-standing
takeoff and squirting out of the atmosphere with a
blithe disregard for fuel consumption. The Zombies
were going to have to deal with the constant accelera-
tion to hyper as best they could—at least she knew that
they were all sitting or lying down, because the crates
simply weren't big enough for them to stand.

She had been relaying symptoms — observed and
recorded — back to Doctor Kenny and the med staff at
Kleinman Base all along. She had known that they weren't
going to get a lot of answers, but every bit of data was valu-
able, and getting it there ahead of the victims was a plus.

But now that they were on the way, they were on
their own, without the resources of the abandoned dig
or the base they were en route to. The med staff might
have answers — but they likely would not have the
equipment to implement them.

Alex couldn't move while she was accelerating—but
once they made the jump to FTL, he unsnapped his
restraints and headed for the stairs.

"Where are you going?" she asked, nervously.

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137

"The hold. I'm in my suit — there's nothing down
there that can get me through the suit.**

Tia listened to the moans and cries through her hold
pickups; thought about the contact-buttons that
showed fluttering hearts and unsteady breathing. She
knew what would happen if he got down there.

"You can't do anything for them in the crates," she
said. "You know that."

He turned toward her column. "What are you
hiding from me?"

"N-nothing," she said. But she didn't say it firmly
enough.

He turned around and flung himself back in his
chair, hands speeding across the keyboard with agility
caused by days of living in the suit. Within seconds he
had called up every contact-button and had them dis-
played in rows across the screen.

"Tia, what's going on down there?" he demanded.
"They weren't like this before we took off, were they?"

"I think — " She hesitated. "Aiex, I'm not a doctor!"

"You've got a medical library. You've been talking to
the doctors. What do you think?"

"I think—they aren't taking hyper well. Some of the
data the base sent me on brain-damaged simians sug-
gested thatsome kinds of damage did something to the
parts of the brain that make you compensate for — for
things that you know should be there, but aren't.
Where you can see a whole letter out of just parts of it
— identify things from split-second glimpses. Kind of
like maintaining a mental balance. Anyway, when that's
out of commission — " She felt horribly helpless. "I
think for them it's like being in Singularity."

"It or four days?" he shouted, hurting her sensors.
"I'm going down there — "

"And do what?" she snapped back. "What are you
going to do for them? They're afraid of you in that suit!"

"Then I'll — "

"You do, and I'll gas the ship," she said instantly. "I
that, Alex! You put one finger on a release and I'll
gas die whole ship!"

He sat back down, collapsing into his chair. "What can
we do?" he said weakly. "There has to be something."

"We've got some medical supplies," she pointed out
"A couple of them can be adapted to add to the air
supply down there. Help me, Alex. Help me find some-
thing we can do for them. Without you cracking your

suit."

Til try," he said, unhappily. But his fingers were
already on the keyboard, typing in commands to the
med library, and not sneaking towards his suit-releases.
She blanked for a microsecond with relief—

Then went to work.

Three more rimes there were signs of crisis in the
hold. Three more times she had to threaten him to
keep him from diving in and trying to save one of the
Zombies by risking his own life. They lost one more, to
a combination of anti-viral agent and watered-down
sleepygas that they hoped would act as a tranquilizer
rather than an anesthetic. Zombie number twenty-
seven might have been allergic to one or the other,
although there was no such indication in his med
records; his contact-button gave all the symptoms of
allergic shock before he died.

Alex stopped talking to her for four hours after that
— twenty-seven had been in the bottom rank, and a
shot of adrenaline would have brought him out—if it
had been allergic shock. But his crate was also buried
deep in the stacks, and Alex would have had to peel the
whole suit off to get to him. Which Tia wouldn't per-
mit. They had no way of knowing if this was really an
allergic reaction, or if it was another development of
the Zombie Bug. Twenty-seven had been an older
man, showing some of the worst symptoms.

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139

Although Alex wasn't talking to her, Tia kept talking   t
at him, until he finally gave in. Just as well. His silence
had her convinced that he was going to ask for a trans-
fer, and that he hated her—if a shellperson could be in
tears, she was near that state when he finally answered.

"You're right," was all he said. "Tia, you were right
There are fifty more people there depending on both
of us, and if I got sick, dial's the mobile half of the team
out." And he sighed. But it was enough. Things went
back to normal for them. Just in time for the transition
to norm space.

Kleinman Base kept them in orbit, sending a full
decontamination team to fetch Alex as well as the Zom-
bies, leaving Tia all alone for about an hour. It was a
very lonely hour....

But then another decontamination team came
aboard, and when diey left again, two days later, there
was nothing left of her original fittings. She had been
fogged, gassed, stripped, polished, and refitted in that
time. All that was left — besides the electronic com-
ponents—were the ideographs painted on the walls. It
still looked the same, however, because everything was
replaced with the same standard-issue, psychologically
approved beige....

Only then was she permitted to de-orbit and land at
Kleinman Base so that the decontamination team
could leave.

No sooner had the decontamination team left, when
there was a welcome hail at the airlock.

**Tia! Permission to come aboard, ma'am!"

She activated her lock so quickly that it must have
flown open in his face, and brought him up in the lift
rather than waiting for him to climb the stairs. He
sauntered in sans pressure-suit, gave her column a
jaunty salute, and put down his bags.

"I have good news and better news," he said, flinging

himself into his chair. "Which do you want to hear

first?"
"The good news," she replied promptly, and did not

scold him for putting his feet up on the console.

"The good news is all personal. I have been granted
a clean bill of health, and so have you. In addition, since
the decontamination team so rudely destroyed my
clothing and anything else that they couldn't be sure of,
I have just been having a glorious spending-spree down
there at the Base, using a GS unlimited credit account!"

Tia groaned, picturing more neon-purple, or worse.
"Don't open the bags, or they'll think I've had a radia-
tion leak."

He mock-pouted. "My dear lady, your taste is some-
where back in the last decade."

"Never mind my taste," she said. "What's the better

news?"

"Our patients are on their way to full recovery." At
her exclamation, he held up a cautionary hand. "It's
going to take them several months, maybe even a year.
Here's the story — and the reason why they stripped
you of everything that could be considered a fabric. Ac-
cess your Terran entomology, if you would. Call up
something called a 'dust mite' and another something
called a 'sand flea.'"

Puzzled, she did so, laying the pictures side by side
on the central screen.

"As we guessed, this was indeed a virus, with an in-
sect vector. The culprit was something like a sand flea,
which, you will note, has a taste for warm-blooded crit-
ters. But it was about the size of a dust mite. The
fardling things don't hatch until the temperature is
right, the days are long enough, and there's been a
rainstorm. Once they hatch, the only thing that kills
them is really intense insecticide or freezing cold for
several weeks. They live in the dust, like sand fleas.
Those archeologists had been tracking in dust ever

140

Aime McCaffrey &? Mercedes Lackey

since the rainstorm, and since there'd been no sign of
any problems, they hadn't been very careful about
their decontamination protocols. The bugs all hatched
within an hour, or so the entomologists think. They bit
everything in sight, since they always wake up hungry.
Btti — here's the catch — since they were so small, they
didn't leave a bite mark, so there was nothing to show
that anyone had been bitten." He nodded at the
screen. "Every one of the little beggars carries the
virus. It's like E. cok, the human bacillus, living in their
guts the way it does in ours."

"I assume that everyone got bitten about the same
time?" she hazarded.

"Exactly," he said. "Which meant that everyone
came down with the virus within hours of each other.
Mostly, purely by coincidence, in their sleep. The virus
itself invokes allergic shock in most people it infects.
Which can look a lot like a stroke, under the right cir-
cumstances."

"So we didn't — " She stopped herself before she
went any further, but he finished the statement for her.

"No, we didn't kill anyone. It was the Zombie Bug.
And the best news of all is that the Zombie state is
caused by interference with the production of neuro-
transmitters. Clean out the virus, and eventually
everyone gets back to normal."

"QhAlex—" she said, and he interrupted her.

"A little more excellent news — first, that we get a
bonus for this one. And second, my very dear, you
saved my life."

"I did?" she replied, dumbfounded.

"If I had cracked my suit even once, the bugs would
have gotten in. They were everywhere, in your carpet,
the upholstery; either they got in the first time we
cracked the lock, or the standard decontamination
didn't wash them all off the suit or kill them. And I am
one of those seventy-five percent of the population so

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141

violently allergic to them that — " He let her fill in the

rest.

"Alex—I'd rather have you as my brawn than all the
bonuses in the world," she said, after a long pause.

"Good," he said, rising, and patting her column
gently. "I feel the same way."

Before the moment could get maudlin, he cleared
his throat, and continued. "Now die bad news: we're so
far behind on our deliveries that they want us out of
here yesterday. So, are you ready to fly, bright lady?"

She laughed. "Strap on your chair, hotshot. Let's
show 'em how to burn on out of here!"

• CHAPTERFIVE

"Well, Tia," Doctor Kenny said genially, from his
vantage point in front of her main screen. "I have to say
that it's a lot more fun talking to you face-to-column
than by messages or double-bounce comlink. Waiting
for four hours for the punchline to a joke is a bit
much."

He faced her column, not the screen, showing the
same courtesy Alex always did. Alex was not aboard at
the moment; he was down on the base spending his
bonus while Tia was in the refit docks in orbit But since
the Pride of Albion was so close, Doctor Kenny had
decided that he couldn't resist making a visit to his most
successful patient.

The new version of his chair had been perfected,
and he was wearing it now. The platform and seat hid
the main power-supply, a shiny exoskeleton covered
his legs up to his waist, and Tia thought he looked like
some kind of ancient warrior-king on a throne.

"Most of my classmates don't get the point of jokes," she
said, with a chuckle. "They just don't seem to have much of
a sense ofhumor. I have to share them with you softies."

"Most of your classmates are as stiff as AIs," he
countered. "Don't worry, they'll loosen up in a decade
or two — that's what Lars tells me, anyway. He says that
living around softies will contaminate even the most
rule-bound shellperson. So, how's life with a partner?
As I recall, that was one of your worst worries, that
you'd end up with a double-debt like Moira for playing
brawn-basketball."

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143

"I really like Alex, Kenny/' she said slowly. "Especial-
ly after the Zombie Bug run. I hate to admit this, but—
I even like him more than you, or Anna, or Lars. And
that's what I wanted to talk to you about when you
called the other day. I really — trust your judgment."

He nodded, sagely. "And since I'm not in the brain-
brawn program, /am not bound by regs to report you
when you tell me how much you are attracted to your
brawn." He sent an ironic wink toward her column.

She let herself relax a little. "Something like that,"
she admitted. "Kenny, I just don't know what to think.
He's sloppy, he's forgetful, he's a little impulsive — he
has the worst taste in clothes — and I'd rather have him
as a partner than anyone else in the galaxy. I'd rather
talk to kirn than my classmates, and being classmates is
supposed to be the strongest bond a shellperson can
have!" Supposed to be — that was the trick, wasn't it?
There was very little in her life that had happened the
way it was supposed to. At this point, she should have
been entering advanced studies under the auspices of
the Institute — not working for it. She should have
been a softie — not a shellperson.

But you didn't deal with life by dwelling on what
"should" have happened. You handled it by making
the best out of what had happened.

"Well, Tia, you spent the first seven of your most for-
mative years as a softperson," Kenny pointed out
gently. His next words echoed her own earlier
thoughts. "You never thought you'd wind up in a shell,
where your classmates never knew anything but their
shells and their teachers. Just like when a chick hatches
— what it imprints on is what it's going to fall in love
with."

"I — I didn't say I was in love," she stammered, sud-
denly alarmed.

Kenny held his peace. He simply stared at her
column with a look she remembered all too well. The

144

Anne McCaffrey &f Mercedes Lackey

one that said she wasn't entirely telling the truth, and
he knew it.

"Well — maybe a little/' she admitted, in a very soft
voice. "But—it's not like I was another softie—"

"You can love a friend, you know," Kenny pointed
out. "That's been acknowledged for centuries — even
among stuffy shellperson Counselors. Remember
your Greek philosophers — they felt there were three
kinds of love, and only one of them had anything to do
with the body. Eros,fUios, and agape."

"Sexual, brotherly, and religious/' she translated,
feeling a little better. "Well, okay. FiUos, then."

"Lars translates them as 'love involving the body/
'love involving the mind/ and 'love involving the soul.'
That's even more apt in your case," Kenny said com-
fortably. "Both/z/zos and agape apply here."

"I guess you're right," she said, feeling sheepish.

"Tia, my dear," Kenny said, without a hint of
patronization, "there is nothing wrong with saying that
you love your brawn—the first words you transmitted to
me from your new shell, in case you've forgotten, were
'Doctor Kenny, I love you.' Frankly, I'm a lot happier
hearing this from you than something 'appropriate.'"

"Like what?" she asked curiously.

"Hmm. Like this." He raised his voice an octave.
"Well, Doctor Rennet," he said primly, "I'm quite
pleased with the performance of my brawn Alexander.
I believe we can work well together. Our teamwork was
quite acceptable on this last assignment."

"You sound like Kari, exactly like Kari." She
laughed. "Yes, but imagine trying to have this conver-
sation with one of my BB Counselors!"

He screwed up his face and flung up his hands. "Oh,
horrors}" he exclaimed, his expression matching the
outrage in his voice. "How coidd you confess to feeling
anything? AH-One-Oh-Three-Three, I am going to have
to report you for instability}"

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"precisely," she replied, sobering. "Sometimes I
think they just want us to be superior sorts of AIs. Self-
aware and self-motivating, but someone get out a
scalpel and excise the feeling pan before you pop them
in their shells."

"There's a fine line they have to tread, dear," he told
her, just as soberly. "Your classmates lack something you
had — the physical nurturing of a parent. They never
touched anything; they've never known anything but a
very artificial environment. They don't really under-
stand emotions, because they've never been allowed to
experience them or even see them near at hand. I don't
think there's any question in my mind what that means,
when they first come out into the real world of us softies.
It means they literally enter a world as foreign and
incomprehensible as any alien culture. In some ways, it
would be better if they all entered professions where they
never had to deal with humans one-on-one."

"Then why — " She picked her words with care.
"Why don't they put adults into shells?"

"Because adults — even children — often can't
adapt to the fact that their bodies don't work anymore,
and that — as you pointed out yourself— they will
never have that human touch again." He sighed. "I've
seen plenty of that in my time, too. You are an excep-
tion, my love. But you always have been special.
Outstandingly flexible, adaptable." He sat back in his
chair and thought; she didn't interrupt him. "Tia,
there are things that I don't agree with in the way the
shellperson training program is run. But you're out of
the training area now and into the real world. You'll
find that even the Counselors can have an entirely dif-
ferent attitude out here. They're ready to accept what
works, not just what's in the rule books."

She paused a moment before replying. "Kenny, what
do I do if— things creep over into eras? I mean, I'm not
going to crack my column or anything, but..."

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Anne McCaffrey &Mertedes Lackey

"Helva," Kenny said succinctly. "Think of Helva.
She and her brawn had a romance that still has power
over the rest of known space. If it happens, Tia, let it
happen. If it doesn't, don't mourn over it. Enjoy the fact
that your brawn is your very best friend; that's the way
it's supposed to be, after all. I have faith in your sense
and sensibility; I always have. You'll be fine." He
coughed a little. "As it — ah — happens, I have a bit of
fellow-feeling for you. Anna and I have gotten to be
something of an item,"

"Really?" She didn't even try to modulate the glee
out of her voice. "It's about time! What did she do, tip
your chair over to slow you down and seduce you on
the spot?"

"That's just about word for word what Lars said,"
Kenny replied, blushing furiously. "Except that he
added a few other pointed remarks."

"I can imagine." She giggled. Lars was over two cen-
turies old, and he had seen a great deal in that time.
Every kind of drama a sentient was capable of, in feet—
he was the chief overseer of one of the largest hospital
stations in Central Systems. If there was ever a place for
life-and-death drama, a hospital station was it — as
holo-makers across the galaxy knew. From the smallest
incident to the gravest, Lars had witnessed — and
sometimes participated in — all of it.

He had been in charge of the Pride of Albion since it
was built — he had been built into it. He would never
leave, and never wanted to. Cynical, brilliant—with an
unexpectedly kind heart That was Lars....

He could be the gentlest person, soft- or shell-, that
Tia had ever met. Though he never missed an oppor-
tunity to jab one of his softperson colleagues with his
sharp wit.

"But Kenny — " She hesitated, eaten alive with
curiosity, but unsure how tar she could push, "Kenny,
how nosy can I be about you and Anna?"

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147

"Tia, I know everything there is to know about you,
fjom your normal heart rate to the exact composition of
the chemicals in your blood when you're under stress.
My doctor knows the same about me. We're both used to
being poked and prodded — " he paused " — and you
are my very dear friend. If there is something you are
really curious about, please, go ahead and ask." His eyes
twinkled. "But don't expect me to tell you about the birds
and the bees."

"You're — when we first met, you called yourself a
'medico on the half-shell.' You're half machine. How
does Anna — feel about that?" If she could have
blushed, she would have, she felt so intrusive.

He didn't seem to feel that she was intruding, how-
ever. "Hmm, good questions. The answer, my dear, is
one that I am afraid can't apply to you. I'm only 'half
machine' when I'm strapped in. When I'm not in my
chair, I'm — an imperfect, but entirely human crea-
ture. "He smiled.

"So it's like comparing rocks to bonbons." That was
something she hadn't anticipated. "Or water to sheet-
metal."

"Good comparisons. You're not the first Co ask these
questions, by the way. So don't think you're unique in
being curious." He stretched and grinned. "Anna and I
are doing a lot of— hmm—personal-relations coun-
seling of my other handicapped patients."

"At least I'm not some kind of— would-be voyeur."
That was nice to know.

"You, however, were and are in an entirely different
boat than my other patients," he warned. "What
applies to them does not apply to you." He shook his
head. "I'm going to give this to you straight and
without softening. You have no working nerves, sen-
sory or motor control, below your neck. And from what
I've seen, there was some further damage to the
autonomic system as well before we stabilized you.

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What with the mods they made to you when you went
into the shell, you're dependent on life-support now. I
don't think you could survive outside your shell — I
know you wouldn't be happy."

"Oh. All right" In a way, she was both disappointed
and relieved. Relieved that it was one more factor she
wouldn't have to consider in her ongoing partnership.
Disappointed — well, not that much. She hadn't really
thought there would ever be any way to reverse the
path that had brought her into her column.

"I did bring some records of the things I've been
working on to show you—devices that are helping out
some of our involuntary amputees. I thought you'd be
interested, just on an academic basis." He slipped a
datahedron into her reader, and she brought up the
display on her central screen. "This young lady was a
professional dancer — she was trapped under several
tons of masonry after an earthquake. By the time
medics got to her, the entire limb had suffered cell-
death. There was no saving it"

The video portion of the dip showed a lovely young
lady in leotards and tights trying out what looked like a
normal leg — except that it moved very stiffly.

"The problem with the artificial limbs we've been
giving amputees is that while we've fixed most of the
weight and movement problems, they're still complete-
ly useless for someone like a dancer, who relies on
sensory input to tell her whether or nor her foot is in
the right position." Kenny smiled fondly as he watched
the girl on the screen. "That's Lila within a few minutes
of having the leg installed. At the hip, may I add. The
next clip will be three weeks later, then three months."

The screen flickered as Tia found her attention ab-
sorbed by the girl. Now she was working out in what
were obviously ballet exercises, and doing very well, so
for as Tia could tell. Then the screen flickered a third
time —

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149

And the girl was on stage, partnered in some kind of
classic ballet piece—and if Tia had not known her left
leg was cyborged, she would never have guessed it

"Here's a speed-keyer who lost his hand," Kenny
continued, but he turned towards the column.
"Between my work and Moto-Prosthetics, we've beaten
the sensory input problem, Tia," he said proudly. "Lila
tells me she's changed the choreography so that she
can perform some of the more difficult moves on her
left foot instead of her right. The left won't get toe-
blisters or broken foot-bones, the tendons won't tear,
the knee won't give, and the ankle has no chance of
buckling. The only difference thatsAe can see between
the cyborged leg and the natural one is that the cyborg
is a litde heavier—not enough to make any difference
to her if she can change the choreography — and it's a
lot sturdier."

A few more of Doctor Kenny*s patients came up on
the screen, but neither of them were paying attention,

"There have to be some problems," Tia said, finally.
"I mean, nothing is perfect"

"We don't havefutt duplication of sensory input In
Lila's case, we have it in the entire foot and the ankle
and knee-joints, and we've pretty much ignored the
stretches of leg in between. Weight is the other prob-
lem. The more sensory nerves we duplicate, the higher
the weight A ten-kilo hand is going to give someone a
lot of trouble, for instance." Kenny shifted a little in his
chair. "But all of this is coming straight out of what's
going on in the Lab Schools, Tia! And most of it is from
the brainship program—the same thing that gives you
sensory input from the ships' systems are what became
the sensory linkups for those artificial limbs."

"That's wonderful!" Tia said, very pleased for him.
"You're quite something, Doctor Rennet!"

"Oh, there's a lot more to be done," he said modesdy.
"I haven't heard any of Lila's fellow dancers clamoring

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to have double-amputations and new legs installed.
She has her problems, and there's some pain involved,
even after healing is completed. In a way, it's a good
thing for us that our first leg-installation was for a dan-
cer, because Lila was used to living with pain — all
dancers are. And it's very expensive; she was lucky,
because the insurance company involved judged that
compensating her for a lost—very lucrative — career
was more expensive than an artificial limb. Although

—given the life expectancy of you shellpersons, and
compare it to those of us still in our designed-by-
genetics containers — well, I can foresee a day when
we'll all have our brains tucked into minishells when
the old envelope starts to decay, and instead of deciding
what clothes we want to wear, we have to decide what
body to put on."

"Oh, I don't think itTl come to that, really," Tla said
decisively. "For one thing, if it's expensive for one limb,
a whole body would be impossible."

"It is that," Kenny agreed. "But to tell you the truth,
right now the problem besides expense isn't technical

— we could put the fully-functioning body together —•
and do it today. It's actually easier to do that than just
one limb. Oh, by that, I mean one with full sensory
inputs.**

He didn't say anything, but he winked, and grinned
wickedly. "And by 'full sensory input,' I mean exactly
what you're thinking, you naughty young lady."

"Me?" she said, with completely feigned indignation.
"I have no idea what you're talking about! 1 am as
innocent as—as—"

"As I am," Kenny said. "You were the one who was
asking about me and Anna."

She remained silent, pretending dignity. He con-
tinued to grin, and she knew he wasn't fooled in the
least

"Well, anyway, the problem is having a life-support

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151

system for a naked brain." He shrugged. "Can't quite
manage that — putting a whole body into a life-sup-
port shell is still the only way to deal with trauma like
yours. And we can't fitthat into a human-sized body."

"Oh, you could make us great big bodies and create a
whole race of giants," she joked. "That should actually
be easier, from what you've told me."

He cast his eyes upwards, surprising her somewhat
with his sudden flare of exasperation. "Believe it or
not, there's a fellow who wants to do something like
that, for the holos. He wants to create giant full-sensory
bodies of— oh, dinosaurs, monsters, whatever — hire
a shellperson actor, and use the whole setup in his
epics."

"No!" she exclaimed.

"I swear," he said, placing his hand over his heart.
"True, every word of it. And believe it or not, he has the
money. Holostars make more than you do, my love. I
think the next time some brain wants to retire from
active ship-service, especially one that's bought out his
contract, this fellow just might tempt them into the
holos."

"Amazing. Virtual headshaking here." She thought
for a moment. "What would the chances be of creating
a life-sized body with some kind ofbrainstem link to the
shell?"

"Like a radio?" he hazarded. "Hmm. Good question.
A real problem; there is a lot of information carried by
these nerves — you'd need separated channels for
everything, but — well, the effective range would be
very, very short, otherwise you run the risk of signal
breakup. That turned out to be the problem with this
rig," he finished, nodding at his armored legs." It has to
stay in the same room with me, otherwise — Greek
frieze time."

She laughed.

"Anyway, the whole rig would probably cost as much

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153

as a brainship, so it's not exactly practical," he con-
cluded. "Not even for me, and they pay me very well."

Not exactly practical for me, either, she thought, and dis-
missed the whole idea. Practical, for a brainship, meant
buying out her contract. After all, if she wanted to be
free to join the Institute as an active researcher and go
chasing the EsKays on her own, she was going to have
to buy herself out

"Well, money — that's the other reason I wanted to
talk to you," she said.

"And the bane of the BB program rears its ugly
head," he intoned, and grinned. "Oh, they're going to
hate you. You're just like all the rest of the really good
ones. You want to buy that contract out, don't you?"

"I don't think there are too many CS ships thatrfonK
plan on doing it someday," she countered. "We're
people, not Al drones. We like to have a choice of
where we go. So, do you have any ideas of how I can
start raising my credit balance? Moira has kind of
cornered the market on spotting possible new sites
from orbit and entry."

"Gave her the idea, did you?" Kenny shook his
finger at you. "Don't you know you should never give
ideas away to the competition?"

"She wasn't competition, then," Tia pointed out

"Well, you have a modest bonus from the Zombie
Bug run, right?" he said, scratching his eyebrow as he
thought "What about investing it?"

"In what?" she countered. "I don't know anything
about investing money."

"Operating on my own modest success in putting my
own money into Moto-Prosthetics — and not in paper
stock, my dear, but in shares in the company itself— if
you use your own knowledge to choose where to
invest, the results can be substantial." He tapped his
fingers on the side of his chair. "It's not insider trading,
if you're thinking that 1 would consider putting your

money where your interest and expertise is."

"Virtual headshaking," she replied. "I have no idea
what you're getting at What do 7 know?"

"Look — "he said, leaning forward, his eyes bright
with intensity. "The one thing an archeologist is always
cognizant of is the long term — especially long-term
patterns. And the one thing that most often trips up the
sophonts of any race is that they are not thinking in the
long term. Look for what a friend of mine called 'dis-
asters waiting to happen,' and invest in the companies
that will be helping to recover from that disaster."

"Well, that sounds good in theory," she said doubt-
fully. "But in practice? How am I going to find
situations like that? I'm only one person, and I've
already got a job."

"Tia, you have the computing power of an entire
brainship at your disposal," Kenny told her firmly.
"And you have access to Institute records for every in-
habited planet that also holds ruins. Use both. Look for
problems the ancients had, then see if they'll happen
again at current colonies."

Well, nothing sprung immediately to mind, but it
would while away some time. And Kenny had a point

He glanced at his wrist-chrono. "Well, my shuttle
should be hailing you right about—"

"Now," she finished. "It's about to dock: four slots
from me, to your right as you exit the lock. Thanks for
coming, Kenny."

He directed his Chair to the lift. "Thank you for
having me, Tia. As always, it's been a pleasure."

He turned to look back over his shoulder as he
reached the lift, and grinned. "By the way, don't bother
to check my med records. Anna has never complained
about my performance yet."

If she could have blushed...

While Alex spent his time with some of his old

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155

classmates — presumably living up to what he had told
her was the class motto, "The Party Never Ends" — she
dove headlong into Institute records. The Institute
gave her free, no-charge access to anything she
wanted; perhaps because they counted her as a kind of
member-researcher, perhaps because of her pan in the
Zombie Bug rescue — or perhaps because brainship
access was one hole in their access system they'd never
plugged because they never thought of it. Normally
they charged for every record downloaded from the
main archives. It didn't matter to her; diere was plenty
there to look into.

But first — her own peculiar quest She caught up
on everything having to do with the old EsKay inves-
tigations in fairly short order. There wasn't much of
anything new from existing digs, so she checked to see
what Pota and Braddon were doing, then went on to
postings on brand new EsKay finds.

It was there that she came across something quite by
accident.

It was actually rather amusing, when it came down
to it It was the report from a Class Two dig, from the
group taking over a site uiat had initially gotten a lot of
excitement from the Exploration team. They had
reported it as an EsKay site — the First ever to be
uncovered on a non-Marslike world. And an EsKay
Evaluation team was sent post-haste.

It turned out to be a case of misidentification; not Es-
Kays at all, but another race entirely, the Megalt
Tresepts, one of nowhere near as much interest to the
Institute. Virtually everything was known about the
Megalts; they had sent out FTL ships in the for distant
past, and some of the colonies they had established still
existed. Some of their artifacts looked like EsKay work,
and if there was no notion that the Megalts had been in
the neighborhood, it was fairly easy to make the
mistake.

The world was surprisingly Terran — which would
have made an EsKay site all the more valuable if it
really had been there.

Although it was not an EsKay site after all, Tia con-
tinued reading the report out of curiosity. Largo
Draconis was an odd little planet — with an eccentric
orbit that made for one really miserable decade every
century or so. Other than that, it was quite habitable;
really pleasant, in fact, with two growing seasons in
every year. The current settlements were ready for that
dismal decade, according to the report — but also
according to the report, the Megalts had been, too.

Yet the Megalt sites had been abandoned, com-
pletely. Not typical of the logical, systematic race.

During the first year of that wretched ten years,
every Megalt settlement on the planet (all two of them)
had been abandoned. And not because they ran out of
food, either, which was her first thought. They had
stockpiled more than enough to carry them through,
even with no harvests at all.

No; not because the settlers ran out of food — but
because the native rodents did.

Curious about what had happened, the Evaluation
team had found the settlement records, which outlined
the entire story, inscribed on the thin metal sheets the
Megalts used for their permanent hardcopy storage.
The settlements had been abandoned so quickly that
no one had bothered to find and take them.

It was a good thing the Megalts used metal for their
records; nothing else would have survived what had
happened to the settlement The rodents had swarmed
both colonies; a trickle at first, hardly more than a
nuisance. But then, out of nowhere, a swarm, a flood, a
torrent of rodents had poured down over the settle-
ment. They overwhelmed the protections in place —
electric fences — and literally ate their way into the
buildings. Nothing had stopped them. Killing them in

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hordes had done nothing. They merely ate the bodies
and kept moving in.

The evidence all pointed to a periodic change in the
rodents' digestive systems that enabled them to eat any-
thing with a cellulose or petrochemical base, up to and
including plastic

The report concluded with the Evaluation team's
final words on the attitude of the current government
of Largo Draconis, in a personal note that had been
attached to the report.

"Fred: I am just glad we are getting out of here. We told
the Settlement Governor about all this, and they're ignor-
ing us. They think that just because I'm an archeologist, I
have my nose so firmly in the past that I have no grasp on
the present. They told me in the governor's office that
their ward-off fields should be more than enough to hold
off the rats. Not a chance. We're talking about a feeding-
frenzy here, furry locusts, and I don't think they're going
to give a ward-off field a second thought I'm telling you,
Fred, these people are goi ng to be in trouble in a year. The
Megalts threw in the towel, and they weren't anywhere
near as backward as the governor thinks diey were. Maybe
this wonder ward-off field ofhis will keep the rats off, but I
don't think so. And I don't want to find out that he was
wrong by waking up under a blanket of rats. They didn't
eat the Megalts — but they ate their clothes. I don't fancy
piling into a shuttle with my deniere bared to the gentle
breezes — which by that time should be, oh, around fifty
kilometers per hour, and minus twenty Celsius. So I may
even beat this report home. Keep the beer cold and die
fireplace warm for me."

Well. If ever there was something that matched what
Doctor Kenny had suggested, this was it

Just to be certain, she checked several other sources
— not for the veracity of the report, but to see just how
prepared the colony was for the "rats" as well as the
worsening weather.

Everything she found bore out what the unknown
writer had told "Fred." Ward-off generators were
standard issue, not heavy-duty. Warehouses had metal
doors — and many had plastic or wooden siding.
Homes were made of native stone and well-insulated
against die cold, but had plastic or wooden doors. Food
had been stockpiled, but what would the colonists do
when the "rats" ate through die warehouse sides to get
at the stockpiled rations? The colony had been
depending on food grown on-planet for the past
twenty years. There were no provisions for importing
food and no synthesizers of any real size. They had
protein farms — but what if the "rats" got into them
and ate the yeast-stock along with everything else?
What would they do when the stockpiled food was
gone? Or if they managed to save the food, what would
they do when—as Fred had suggested—the "rats" ate
through their doors and made a meal off their clothing,
dieir blankets, their furniture....

So much for official records. Was there anyone
on-planet that could pull these people out of their dis-
aster?

It took a full day of searching business-directories
before she had her answer. An on-planet manufacturer
of specialized protection equipment, including heavy-
duty ward-off and protection-field generators, could
provide protection once the planetary governor
admitted there was a problem. Governmental resources
might not be able to pay for all the protection the
colonists needed — but over eighty percent of the
inhabitants carried hazard insurance, and the insurance
companies should pay for protection for their clients.

That was half of the answer. The other half?

Another firm with multi-planet outlets, and a load of
old-fashioned synthesizers in a warehouse within ship-
ping distance. They didn't produce much in the way of
variety, but load them up with raw materials, carbon

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159

from coal or oil, minerals, protein from yeast and fiber
from other vat-grown products, and you had some-
thing basic to eat — or wear — or make into
furnishings....

She set her scheme in motion. Butwof through Beta,
her supervisor, but through Lars and his.

Before Alex returned, she had made all the arrange-
ments; and she had included carefully worded letters
to the two companies she had chosen — plus all of the
publicly available records. She tried to convey a warn-
ing without sounding like some kind of crazed hysteric

Of course, the fact that she was investing in their
firms should at least convey the idea that she was an
hysteric with money....

If they had any sense, they would be able to put the
story together for themselves from the records, and
they would believe her. Hopefully, they would be
ready.

She transmitted the last of the messages, just as Alex
arrived at her airlock.

"Permission to come aboard, ma'am," he called
cheerfully, as she opened the lock for him. He ran up
the stairs two at a time, and when he burst into the
main cabin, she told herself that fashions would surely
change, soon — he was dressed in a chrome yellow
tunic with neon-red piping, and neon-red trousers
with chrome-yellow piping. Both bright enough to
hurt the eyes and dazzle the pickups, and she was
grateful she could tune down die intensity of her visual
receptors.

"How was your reunion?" she asked, once his
clothes weren't blinding her.

"There weren't more than a half dozen of them," he
told her, continuing through the hall and down to his
own cabin. He pitched both his bags on his bed, and
returned. "We just missed Chria by a hair. But we had a
good time."

"I'm surprised you didn't come back with a hang-
over."
He widened his eyes with surprise. "Not me! I'm the

Academy designated driver — or at any rate, I make
sure people get on the right shuttles. Never touch the
stuff, myself, or almost never. Clogs die synapses."
Tia felt irrationally pleased to hear that
"So, did you miss me? I missed you. Did you have
enough to do?" He flung himself down in his chair and
put his feet up on the console." I hope you didn't spend
all your time reading Institute papers."

"Oh," she replied lightly, "I found a few other things
to occupy my time...."

The comlink was live, and Alex was on his very best
behavior — including a fresh, and only marginally
rumpled, uniform. He sat quietly in his chair, the very
picture of a sober Academy graduate and responsible
CS brawn.

Tia reflected that it was just as well she'd bullied him
into that uniform. The transmission was shared by
Professor Barton Glasov y Verona-Gras, head of the
Institute, and a gray-haired, dark-tunicked man the
professor identified as Central Systems Sector
Administrator Joshua Elliot-Rosen y Sinor. Very high
in administration. And just now, very concerned about
something, although he hid his concern well. Alex had
snapped to a kind of seated "attention" the moment his
face appeared on the screen.

"Alexander, Hypatia — we're going to be sending
you a long file of stills and holos," Professor Barton
began. "But for now, the object you see here on my
desk is representative of our problem."

The "object" in question was a perfectly lovely little
vase. The style was distinctive; skewed, but with a very
sensuous sinuousity, as if someone had fused Art
Nouveau with Salvador Dali. It seemed — as nearly as

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Tia could tell from the transmission — to be made of
multiple layers of opalescent glass or ceramic.

It also had the patina that only something that has
been buried for a very long time achieves.

Or something with a chemically faked patina. But would
the professor himself have called them if all he was
worried about were fake antiquities? Not likely.

The only problem with the vase—if it was a genuine
artifact — was that it did not match the style of any
known artifact in any of Tia's files.

"You know that smuggling and site-robbing has
always been a big problem for us," Professor Barton
continued. "It's very frustrating to come on a site and
find it's already been looted. But this — this is doubly
frustrating. Because, as I'm sure Hypatia has already
realized, the style of this piece does not match that of
any known civilization."

"A few weeks ago, hundreds of artifacts in this style
flooded the black market," Sinor said smoothly.
"Analysis showed them to be quite ancient — this piece
for instance was made some time when Ramses the
Second was Pharaoh."

The professor was not wringing his hands, but his
distress was fairly obvious. "There are hundreds of these
objects!" he blurted. "Everything from cups to votive
offerings, from jewelry to statuary! We not only don't
know where they've come from, but we don't even
know any thing about the people that made them!"

"Most of the objects are not as well-preserved as this
one, of course," Sinor continued, sitting with that
incredible stillness that only a professional politician or
actor achieves. "But besides being incredibly valuable,
and not incidentally, funneling money into the
criminal subculture, there is something else rather dis-
tressing associated with these artifacts."

Tia knew what it had to be as soon as the words were
out of the man's mouth. Plague.

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161

"Plague," he said solemnly. "So far, this has not been
a fetal disease, at least, not to the folk who bought these
little trinkets. They have private physicians and
iii-house medicomps, obviously."

High families, Tia surmised. So the High Families are
iiaxedupmthis.

"The objects really aren't dangerous, once they've
been through proper decontam procedures," the
professor added hastily. "But whoever is digging these
things up isn't even bothering with a run under the
U V gun. He's just cleaning them up — "

Tia winced inwardly, and saw Alex wince. To tell an
archeologist that a smuggler had "cleaned up" an
artifact, was like telling a coin collector that his nephew
Joey had gotten out the wire brush and shined up his
collection for him.

*• — cleaning them up, putting them in cases, and
selling them." Professor Barton sighed. "I have no idea
why his helpers aren't coming down with this. Maybe
they're immune. Whatever the reason, the receivers of
these pieces are, they are not happy about it, and they
want something done."

His expression told Tia more than his words did.
The High Families who had bought artifacts they must
have known were smuggled and possibly stolen, and
some members of their circle, had gotten sick. And
because the Institute was the official organization in
charge of ancient relics, they expected the Institute to
find the smuggler and deal with him.

Not that any of them would tell us how and where they found
out about these treasures. Nor would they ever admit that they
knew they were gray market, if not black. And if they'd stop
buying smuggled artifacts, they-wouldn't get sick.

But none of that meant anything when it came to the
High Families, of course. They were too wealthy and
too powerful to ever find themselves dealing with such
simple concepts as cause and effect.

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163

Hmm. Except once in a great while — tike now — when it
rises upand bites them.

"In spite of the threat of disease associated with these
pieces, they are still in very high demand," Sinor said.

Because someone in the High families spread the word that
you'd better run the thing through decontamination after you
buy it, so you can have your pretty without penalty. But there
was something wrong with this story. Something that
didn't quite fit. But she couldn't figure out what it was.

Meanwhile, the transmission continued. "But I don't
have to tell either of you how dangerous it is to have
these things out there," Professor Barton added. "It's
fairly obvious that the smugglers are not taking even
the barest of precautions with the artifacts. It becomes
increasingly likely with every piece sold at a high price
that someone will steal one, or find out where the
source is, or take one to a disadvantaged area to sell it"

A slum, you mean, Professor. Was he putting too much
emphasis on this?

Tia decided to show that both she and her brawn
were paying attention. "I can see what could happen
then, gentlemen," she countered. "Disease spreads
very quickly in areas of that sort, and what might not be
particularly dangerous for someone of means will kill
the impoverished."

And then we have afutir-scale epidemic and a panic on our
hands. But he had to know how she felt about this. He
knew who she was — there weren't too many
"Hypatias" in the world, and he had been the immedi-
ate boss of Pota and Braddon's superior. He had to
know the story. He was probably trading on it

"Precisely, Hypatia," said Sinor, in an eerie "answer"
to her own thoughts.

"I hope you aren't planning on using us as smuggler
hunters," Alex replied, slowly. "I couldn't pass as High
Family in a million years, so I couldn't be in on the pur-
chasing end. And we aren't allowed to be armed — I

know I don't want to take on the smuggling end
without a locker full of artillery!*

In other words, gentlemen, "we ain't stupid, we ain't
expendable, and we ain't gain'." But this was all sounding a
litde too pat, a little too contrived. If Sinor told them
that they weren't expected to catch the smugglers them-
selves .. •

»No — " Sinor said soothingly—and a little too has-
tily. "No, we have some teams in the Enforcement
Division going at both ends. However, it is entirely pos-
sible that the source for these artifacts is someone—or
rather, several someones—working on Exploration or
Evaluation teams. Since the artifacts showed up in this
sector first, it is logical to assume that they originate
here."

Too smooth. Too pat. This isatta story. But a/Ay?

"So you want us to keep our eyes peeled when we
make our deliveries," Alex filled in.

"You two are uniquely suited," Professor Barton
pointed out "You both have backgrounds in archeol-
ogy. Hypatia, you know how digs work, intimately.
Once you know how to identify these artifacts, if you
see even a hint of them — shards, perhaps, or broken
bits of jewelry — you'll know what they are and where
they came from."

"We can do that," Tia replied, carefully. "We can be a
litde snoopy, I think, without arousing any suspicions."

"Good. That was what we needed," Professor Barton
sounded very relieved. "I suppose I don't need to add
that there is a bonus in this for you."

"I can live with a bonus," Alex responded cheerfully.

The two VIPs signed off, and Alex turned immedi-
ately to Tla.

"Did that sound as phony to you as it did to me?" he
demanded.

"Well, the objects they want are certainly real
enough," she replied, playing back her internal

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AmeMcCaffrey 6f Mercedes Lackey

recording of the conversation and analyzing every
word. "But whether they really are artifacts is another
question. There's definitely more going on than
they're wUling to tell us."

Alex leaned back in his chair and put his hands
behind his head. "Are these things financing espionage
or insurrection?" he hazarded. "Or buying weapons?"

She stopped her recording; there was something
about the artifact that bothered her. She enhanced the
picture and threw it up on the screen.

"What's wrong with this?" she demanded. Alex
leaned forward to have a look.

"Is that a hole bored in the base?" he said. "Bored in,
then patched over?"

"Could be." She enhanced her picture again. "Does
it seem to you that the base is awfully thick?"

"Could be," he replied. "You know... we have only
their word that these are 'alien artifacts.' What if they
are nothing of the sort?"

"They wouldn't be worth much of anything then —
unless — "

The answer came to her so quickly that it brought its
own fireworks display with it. "Got it!" she exclaimed,
and quickly accessed the Institute library for a certain
old news program.

She remembered this one from her own childhood;
both for the fact that it had been an ingenious way to
smuggle and because Pota had caught her watching it,
realized what the story was about, and shut it off. But
not before Tia had gotten the gist of it.

One of the Institute archeologists had been sub-
verted by a major drug-smuggler who wanted a way to
get his supply to Central. In another case where there
were small digs on the same planets as colonies, the
archeologist had himselfbecome addicted to the mood-
altering drug called "Paradise," and had made himself
open to blackmail.

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165

The blackmail came from the supplier-producer
himself. Out there in the fringe, it was easy enough to
hide his smuggled supplies in ordinary shipments of
agri-goods, but the nearer one got to civilization, the
harder it became. Publicly available transport was out
of the question.

But there were other shipments going straight to the
heart of civilization. Shipments that were so innocent,
and so fragile, they never saw a custom's inspector.
Such as... Institute artifacts.

So the drug-dealer molded his product in the like-
ness of pottery shards. And the archeologist on-site
made sure they got packed like any other artifacts and
shipped — although they were never cataloged. Once
the shipment arrived at the Institute, a worker inside
the receiving area would set the crates with particular
marks aside and leave them on the loading dock over-
night. They would, of course, disappear, but since they
had never been cataloged, they were never missed.

The only reason the archeologist in question had
been caught was because an overzealous graduate stu-
dent had cataloged the phony shards, and when they
came up missing at the Institute, the police became in-
volved.

Tia ran the news clip for Alex, who watched it atten-
tively. "What do you think?" she asked, when it was
over.

"I think our friend in the dull blue-striped tunic had
a strangely fit look about him. The look that says
'police' to yours truly." Alex nodded. "I think you're
right. I think someone is trying the artifact-switch
again, except that this time they're coming in on the
black market."

She did a quick access to the nets, and began search-
ing for a politician named Sinor. She found one — but
he did not match the man she had seen on the trans-
mission.

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Aime McCaffrey & Mercedes Lackey

"The trick is probably that if someone sees a crate
full of smuggled glassware, they don't think of drugs."
Tia felt very smug over her deduction, and her iden-
tification of Sinor as a ringer. Of course, there was no
way of knowing if her guess was right or wrong, but
still. . - - "The worst that is likely to happen to an
artifact-smuggler is a fine and a slap on the wrist. They
aren't taken very seriously, even though there's serious
money in it and the smugglers may have killed to get
them,"

"That's assuming inspectors even find the artifacts.
So where were we supposed to fit in to all this?" Alex
ran his hand through his hair. "Do they think we're
going to find this guy?"

"1 think that they think he's working with one of the
small-dig people again. By the way, you were right
about Sinor. Or rather, the Sinor we saw is not the one
of record." Another thought occurred to her. "You
know — their story may very well have been genuine.
There's not a lot of room in jewelry to hide drugs.
Whoever is doing this may have started by smuggling
out the artifacts, freelance — got tangled up with some
crime syndicate, and now he's been forced to deal the
fake, drug-carrying artifacts along with the real ones."

"Now thai makes sense!" Alex exclaimed. "That fits
all the parameters. Do we still play along?"

"Ye-es," she replied slowly. "But in a severely limited
sense, I'd say. We aren't trained in law enforcement,
and we don't carry weapons. If we see something, we
report it, and get the heck out"

"Sounds good to me, lady," Alex replied, with patent
relief. "I'm not a coward — but I'm not stupid. And I
didn't sign up with the BB program to get ventilated by
some low-down punk. If I wanted to do that, all I have
to do is stroll into certain neighborhoods and flash
some glitter. Tia — why all that nonsense about
plague?"

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167

"Partially to hook us in, I think," she said, after a
moment. "They know we were the team that got the
Zombie Bug—we'll feel strongly about plague. And par-
dally to keep us from touching these objects. If we don't
mess with them, we won't know about the drug link."

He made a sound of disgust. "You'd think they'd
have trusted us with the real story. I'm half tempted to
blow this whole thing off, just because they didn't. I
won't—" he added hastily, "but I'm tempted."

He began warming up the boards, preparatory to
taking off. Tia opened a channel to traffic control —
but while she did so, she was silently wondering if there
was even more to the story thanshe had guessed.

There was something bothering Alex, and as they
continued on their rounds, he tried to put his finger on
it It was only after he replayed the recorded transmis-
sion of Professor Barton and the bogus "Sinor" that he
realized what it was.

Tia had known that Professor Barton was genuine
— without checking. And Barton had said things that
indicated he knew who she was.

Alex had never really wondered about her back-
ground. He'd always assumed that she was just like
every other shellperson he'd ever known; popped into
her shell at birth, because of fatal birth-defects, with
parents who rather would forget she had ever been
born. Who were just as pleased that she was someone
else's problem.

What was it that the professor had said, though? You
both have backgrounds in archeology. Hypatia, you know how
digs work, intimately.

From everything that Jon Chernov had said, the
shellperson program was so learning-intensive that
there was no time for hobbies. A shellperson only
aojuired hobbies after he got out in the real world and
had leisure time for them. The Lab Schools' program

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Anne McCaffrty &? Mercedes Lackey

was so intensive that even play was scheduled and
games were choreographed, planned, and taught just
Uke classes. There was no room to foster an "interest"
in archeology. And it was not on the normal course cur-
riculum.

The only way you knew how digs worked "inti-
mately" was to work on them yoursel£

Or be the child of archeologists who kept you on-site
with them.

That was when it hit him; something Tia had said.
The Cades met while they were recovering from Henderson's
Chorea. That kind of information would not be the sort
of thing someone who made a hobby of archeology
would know. Details of archeologists' lives were of
interest only to people who knew them.

Under cover of running a search on EsKay digs, he
pulled up the information on the personnel — back-
tracking to the last EsKay dig the Cades had been on.

And there it was. C-121 - Active personnel, Braddon
Maartens-Cade, Pota Andropolous-Cade. Dependent,
Hypatia Cade, age seven.

Hypatia Cade; evacuated to station-hospital Pride of
Albion by MedService AI-drone. Victim of some
unknown disease. Braddon and Pota put in isolation—
Hypatia never heard from again. Perhaps she died —
but that wasn't likely.

There could not be very many girls named
"Hypatia" in the galaxy. The odds of two of them being
evacuated to the same hospital-ship were tiny; the odds
that his Tia's best friend, Doctor Rennet Uhua-Sorg —
who was chief of Neurology and Neurosurgery —
would have been the same doctor in charge of that
other Tia's case were so minuscule he wasn't prepared
to try to calculate them.

He replaced the file and logged off the boards feel-
ing as if he had just been hit in the back of the head with
aboard.

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169

Oh, spirits of space. When she took me as brawn, I made a
toast to our partnership — "may it be as long and fruitful as the
Cades'." Oh, decom it. Tun surprised she didn't bounce me out
the airlock right then and there.

"Tia," he said carefully into the silent cabin. "I — uh
— I'd like to apologize — "

"So, you found me out, did you?" To his surprise and
profound relief, she sounded amused. "Yes, I'm
Hypatia Cade. I'd thought about telling you, but then I
was afraid you'd feel really badly about verbally falling
over your own feet You do realize that you can't access
any data without my being aware of it, don't you?"

"Well, heck, and I thought I was being so sneaky." He
managed a weak grin. "I thought I'd really been cover-
ing my tracks well enough that you wouldn't notice. I —
uh—really am sorry if I made you feel badly."

"Oh, Alex, it would only have been tacky and taste-
less — or stupid and insensitive — if you'd done it on
purpose." She laughed; he'd come to like her laugh, it
was a deep, rich one. He'd often cold her BB jokes just
so he could hear it. "So it's neither; it'sjust one of those
things. I assume that you're curious now. What is it you
want to know about me?"

"Everything!" he blurted, and then flushed with
embarrassment. "Unless you'd rather not talk about it."

"Alex, I don't mind at all! I had a very happy
childhood, and frankly, it will be a lot more comfortable
being able to talk about Mum and Dad — or with Mum
and Dad — without trying to hide them from you." She
giggled this time, instead of laughing. "Sometimes I felt
as if I was trying to hide a secret lover, only in reverse!"

"So you still stay in contact with your parents?" Alex
was fascinated; this went against everything he'd been
told about shellpersons, either at the academy or
directly from Jon Chernov. Shellpersons didn't have
families; their supervisors and their classmates were
their families.

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Arme McCaffrey &? Mercedes Lackey

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171

"Of course I still stay in contact with them. I'm their
biggest fen. If archeologists can have fens." Her center
screen came up; on it was a shot of Pota and Braddon,
proudly displaying an ornate set of body-armor.
"Here's something from their latest letter; they just
uncovered the armory, and what they found is going to
set the scholastic world on its collective ears. That's iron
plates you see on Bronze Age armor."

"No — "He stared in fascination, and not just at the
armor. At Pota and Braddon, smiling and waving like
any other parents for their child. Pota pointed to some-
thing on the armor, while Braddon's mouth moved,
explaining something. Tia had the sound off, and the
definition wasn't good enough for Alex to lip-read.

"That's not my real interest though," she continued.
"I was telling you the truth. I'm after the EsKay
homeworld, but 1 want it because I want to find the bug
that got me." The two side-screens came up, both with
older pictures. "Before you ask, dear, there I am. The
one on the right is my seventh birthday party, the one
on the left, as you can see, is a picture of me with
Theodore Bear and Moira's brawn Tbmas—Ted was a
present from both of them." She paused for a moment
"just checking. Yes, that's the last good picture that was
taken of me. The rest are all in the hospital, and I
wouldn't inflict them on anyone but a neurologist."

Alex studied the two pictures, each of which showed
the same bright-eyed, elfin child. An incredibly pretty
child, dark-haired, blue-eyed, with a thin, delicate fece
and a smile that wouldn't stop. "How did you get into
the shellperson program?" he asked. "I thought they
didn't take anyone after the age of one!"

"They didn't, until me," she replied. "That was Doc-
tor Kenny's doing, and Lars, the systems manager for
the hospital; they were convinced that I was flexible
enough to make the transition—since I was intelligent
enough to understand what had happened to me, and

what it meant Which was — " she added,"—complete
life-support. No mobility."

He shuddered. "I can see why you wouldn't want
that to happen to anyone else ever again."

"Precisely." She blanked the screens before he had a
chance to study the pictures further. "After I turned out
so well, Lab Schools started considering older children
on a case-by-case basis. They've taken three, so far, but
none as old as me."

"Well, my lady — as remarkable as you are now, you
must have been just as remarkable a child," he told her,
meaning every word.

"Flatterer," she said, but she sounded pleased.

"I mean it," he insisted. "I interviewed with two
other ships, you know. None of them had your per-
sonality. 1 was looking for someone like Jon Chernov;
they were more like AI drones."

"You've mentioned Jon before — " she replied, puz-
zled. 'Just what does he have to do with us?"

"Didn't I tell you?" he blurted — then hit himself in the
forehead with his hand. "Decom it, I didn't! Jon's a shell-
person too; he was the supervisor and systems manager
on the research station where my parents worked!"

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "So that's why — "

"Why what?"

"Why you treat me like you do — facing my column,
asking permission to come aboard, asking me what
kind of music I want in the main cabin — "

"Oh, you bet!" he said with a grin. 'Jon made darn
sure I had good shell-soft manners before he let me go off
to the Academy. He'd have verbally blistered my hide if I
ever forgot you're here — and that you're the pan of the
team that can't go offto her own cabin to be alone."

"Tell me about him," she urged.

He had to think hard to remember the first time he
ever started talking to Jon. "I think 1 first realized that
he was around when I was about three, maybe two. My

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Anne McCaffrey fe? Mercedes Lackey

folks are chemtechs at one of the Lily-Baer research
stations — there weren't a lot of kids around at the
time, because it was a new station and most of the per-
sonnel were unattached. There weren't a lot of facilities
for kids, and I guess what must have happened was
that Jon volunteered to sort ofbabysit while my parents
were at work. Wasn't that hard—basically all he had to
do was make sure that the door to my room stayed
locked except when he sent in servos to feed me and so
forth. But I guess I kind of fascinated him, and he
started talking to me, telling me stories — then direct-
ing the servos in playing with me." He laughed. "For a
while my folks thought I was going through the 'in-
visible friend' stage. Then they got worried, because I
didn't grow out of it, and were going to send me to a
headshrinker. That was when Jon interrupted while
they were trying to make the appointment and told
them that he was the invisible friend."

Tia laughed. "You already knew that Moira and I
have known each other for a long time—well, she was
the CS ship that always serviced my folks' digs, that was
how I got to know her."

"Gets you used to having a friend that you can't see,
but can talk to," he agreed. "Well, once I started pre-
school, Jon lost interest for a while, until I started
learning to play chess. He is quite a player himself;
when he saw that I was beating the computer regularly,
he remembered who I was and stepped in, right in the
middle of a game. I was winning until he took over," he
recalled, still a little aggrieved.

"What can I say?" she asked rhetorically.

"I suppose I shouldn't complain. He became my best
friend. He was the one that encouraged my interest in
archeology — and when it became obvious my parents
weren't going to be able to afford all the university
courses that would take, he helped get me into the
Academy. Did you know that a recommendation from

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173

a shellperson counts twice as much as a recommenda-
tion from anyone but a PTA and up?"

"No, I didn't!" She sounded surprised and amused.
"Evidently they trust our judgment."

"Well, you've heard his messages. He's probably as
pleased with how things turned out as I am." He
spread his hands wide. "And that's all there is to know
about me."

"Hardly," she retorted dryly. "But it does dear up a
few mysteries."

When Alex hit his bunk that night, he found he was
having a hard time getting to sleep. He'd always
thought of Tia as a person — but now he had a face to
put with the name.

Jon Chernov had shown him, once, what Jon would
have looked like ifhe could have survived outside the shell.
Alex had known that it was going to be hideous, and had
managed not to shudder or turn away, but it had taken a
major effort of will. After that it had just been easier not to
put a face with the voice. There were completely non-
human races that looked more human than poor Jon.

ButTia hadbeena captivatingly pretty child. She would
have grown up into a stunning adult Shoot, mide that shell,
sheprobabfy'KastmnbigadiiU.Astimnxng, lifeless adiiU. like a
puppet with no strings; a sex-companion android with no hookups.
He had no desire to crack her column; he was not the sort
to be attracted by anything lifeless. Feelie-porn had given
him the creeps, and his one adolescent try with a sex-droid
had sent him away feeling dirty and used.

Butit made the tragedy of what had happened to her all
the more poignant Jon's defects were such that it was a
relieffor everyone that he was in the shell. Tia, though...

But she was happy. She was as happy as any of his
classmates in the Academy. So where was the tragedy?
Only in his mind.

Only in his mind....

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175

CHAPTERSIX

Alex would have been perfectly happy if the past
twelve hours had never happened.

He and Tia returned to Diogenes Base after an
uneventful trip expecting to be sent out on another
series of message-runs, only to learn that on this run,
they would be carrying passengers. Those passengers
were on the way from Central and the Institute by way
of commercial liner and would not arrive for another
couple of days.

That had given him a window of opportunity for a
little shore leave, in a base-town that catered to some
fairly heavy space-going traffic, and he had taken it.

Now he was sorry he had... oh, not for any serious
reasons. He hadn't gotten drunk, or mugged, or into
trouble. No, he'd only made a fool out of himself

Only.

He'd gone out looking for company in the spaceport
section, hanging around in the pubs and food-bars.
He'd gotten more than one invitation, too, but the one
he had followed up on was from a dark-haired, blue-
eyed, elfin little creature with an infectious laugh and a
nonstop smile. "Bet" was her name, and she was a
fourth-generation spacer, following in her family's
footloose tradition.

He hadn't wondered what had prompted his choice
— hadn't even wondered why he had so deviated from
his normal "type" of brown-haired, brown-eyed and
athletic. He and the girl — who it turned out was the
crew chief of an Al-freighter — had a good time

together. They hit a show, had some dinner — and by
mutual agreement, wound up in the same hotel room.

He stitt hadn't thought about his choice of company;
then came the moment of revelation.

When, in the midst of intimacy, he called her Tia."

He could have died, right then and there. For-
tunately the young lady was understanding; Bet just
giggled, called him "Giorgi" back, and they went on
from there. And when they parted, she kissed him, and
told him that his "Tia" was a lucky wench, and to give
her Bet's regards.

Thank the spirits of space he didn't have to tell her
the truth. All she'd seen was the CS uniform and the
spacer habits and speech patterns; he could have been
anything. She certainly wasn't thinking "brawn" when
she had picked him up, and he hadn't told her what he
did for the Courier Service.

Instead of going straight back to the ship, he
dawdled; visited a multi-virtual amusement park, and
took five of the wildest adventures it offered. It took all
five to wash the embarrassment of his slip out of his
recent memory, to put it into perspective.

But nothing would erase the meaning of what he had
done. And it was just his good fortune—andTia's—that
his partner hadn't known who Tia was. Brawns had un-
dergone Counseling for a lot less. CS had a nasty
reputation for dealing with slips like that one. They
wouldn't risk one of their precious shellpersons in the
hands of someone who might become so obsessed with
her that he would try to get at the physical body.

He returned to the docks in a decidedly mixed state
of mind, and with no ideas at all about what — if any-
thing — he could do about it.

Tia greeted her brawn cheerfully as soon as he came
aboard, but she left him alone for a little while he got
himself organized — or as organized as Alex ever got

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177

"I've got the passenger roster," she said, once he'd
stowed his gear. "Want to see them, see what we're get-
ting for the next couple of weeks?"

"Sure," Alex replied, perking up visibly. He had
looked tired when he came in; Tia reckoned shrewdly
that he had been celebrating his shore leave a little too
heavily. He wasn't suffering from a hangover, but it
looked to her as if he'd done his two-day pass to the
max, squeezing twenty-two hours of fun into every
twenty-four hour period. He dropped down into his
chair and she brought up her screens for him.

"Here's our team leader, Doctor Izak Hollister-
Aspen." The Evaluation team leader was an elderly
man; a quad-doc, as thin as a grass stem, clean-shaven,
silver-haired, and so frail-looking Tia was half-afraid
he might break in the first high wind. "He's got four
doctorates, he's published twelve books and about two
hundred papers, and he's been head of twenty-odd
teams already. He also seems to have a pretty good
sense of humor. Listen."

She let the file-fragment run. "I must admit," Aspen
said, in a cracked and quavery voice, "there are any
number of my colleagues who would say that I should
sit behind my desk and let younger bodies take over
this dig. Well," he continued, cracking a smile. "I am
going to do something like that. I'm going to sit behind
my desk in my dome, and let the younger bodies of my
team members take over the digging. Seems to me
that's dose enough to count."

Alex chuckled. "I like him already. I was afraid this
trip was going to be a bore."

"Not likely, with him around. Well, this is our
second-in-command, double-doc Siegfried Haakon-
Fritz. And if this lad had been in charge, I think it might
have been a truly dismal trip." She brought up the
image of Fritz, who was a square-jawed, steely-eyed,
stern-faced monument. He could have been used as

the model for any ortho-Communist memorial statue
to The Glorious Worker In Service To The State. Or
maybe the Self-Righteous In Search Of A Convert.
There was nothing like humor anywhere in the man's
expression. It looked to her as if his head might crack
in half if he ever smiled. "This is all I have, five minutes
of silent watching. He didn't say a word. But maybe he
doesn't believe in talking when it's being recorded."

"Why not?" Alex asked curiously. "Is he paranoid
about being recorded or something?"

"He's a Practical Darwinist," she told him.

"Oh, brother," Alex replied with disgust The Practical
Darwinists had their own sort of notoriety, and Tia was
frankly surprised to find one in the Institute at all.
They were generally concentrated in the soft sciences
— when they were in the sciences at all. Personally, Tia
did not consider political science to be particularly
scientific....

"His political background is kind of dubious," she
continued, "but since there's nothing anyone can hang
on him, it simply says in the file that his politics have not
always been those of the Institute. That's bureaucratic
double-talk for someone they would rather not trust,
but have no reason to keep them out of positions of
authority."

"Got you." Alec nodded. "So, we'll just not mention
politics around him, and we'll make sure it's one of the
forbidden subjects in the main cabin. Who's next?"

"These are our post-docs; they have their hard
science doctorates, and now they're working on their
archeology doctorates." She split her center screen and
installed them both on it at once. "On the right, Les
Dimand-Taylor, human; on the right, Treel rish-Yr nal-
Leert, Rayanthan. Treel is female. Les has a Bio Doc,
and Treel Xenology."

"Hmm, for Treel wouldn't Xenology be the study of
humans?" Alex pointed out. Les was a very intense

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fellow, thin, heavily tanned, very fit-looking, but with
haunted eyes. Treel's base-type seemed to be cold-
weather mammalian, as she had a pelt of very fine,
dense brown fur that extended down onto her cheek-
bones. Her round, black eyes stared directly into the
lens, seeing everything, and giving the viewer the
impression that she was cataloging it all.

"No audio on the post-docs, just static file pictures,"
she continued. "They're attached to Aspen."

"Not to Old Stone Face?" Alex asked. "Never mind,
Any grad student or post-doc he'd have would be a
clonal copy of himself. I can't imagine any other type
staying with him for long."

"And here are our grad students." Again she split the
screen. "Still working on the first doctorate. Both male.
Aldon Reese-Tambuto, human; and Fred, from
Dushayne."

"fted?" Alex spluttered. Understandably. The
Dushaynese could not possibly have looked less human;
he had a square, flat head—literally. Flat on top, flat face,
flattened sides. He was bright green and had no mouth,
just a tiny hole below his nostril slits. Dushaynese were
vegetarian to an extreme; on their homeworld they lived
on tree sap and fruit juice. Out in the larger galaxy they
did very well on sucrose-water and other liquids. They
had, as a whole, very good senses of humor.

"Fred?" Alex repeated.

"Fred," she said firmly. "Very few humans would be
able to reproduce his real name. His vocal organ is a
vibrating membrane in the top of his head. He does
human speech just fine, but we can't manage his." She
blanked her screens. "I'll spare you their speeches;
they are very eager, very typical young grad students
and this will be their first dig."

"Save me—" Alex moaned.

"Be nice," she said firmly. "Don't disillusion them.
Let the next two years take care of that**

He waved his hands vigorously. "Far be it from me to
let them know what gruesome fete awaits them. What
^yas the chance of death on a dig? Twenty percent? And
there's six of them?"

The chance of catching something non-fetal is a lot
higher," she pointed out "Actually, the honor of being
the fatality usually goes to the post-docs or the second-
in-command; they're the ones doing the major
explorations when a dig hits something like a tomb.
The grad students usually are put to sifting sand and
cataloging pottery shards."

Alex didn't get a chance to respond to that, for the
first members of the team arrived at the lock at that
moment, and he went down the lift to welcome them
aboard, while Tia directed the servos in storing most of
their baggage in the one remaining empty hold. As
they came up the lift, both the young "men" were chat-
tering away at high speed, with Alex in the middle,
nodding sagely from time to time and dearly not catch-
ing more than half of what they said. Tia decided to
rescue him.

"Welcome aboard, Fred, Aldon," she said, cutting
through the chatter with her own, higher-pitched
voice.

Silence, as both the grad students looked around for
the speaker.

Fred caught on first, and while his face remained
completely without expression, he had already learned
the knack of displaying human-type emotions with his
voice. "My word!" he exclaimed with delight, "you are
a brainship, are you not, dear lady?"

As a final incongruity, he had adopted a clipped
British accent to go along with his voice.

"Precisely, sir," she replied. "AH One-Oh-Three-
Three at your service, so to speak."

"Wow," Aldon responded, dearly awestruck. "We
get to ride in a brainship? They've actually put us on a

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brainship? Wow, PTAs don't even get rides from brain-
ships! I've never even seen a brainship before — Uh,
hi, what's your real name?" He turned slowly, trying to
figure out which way to face.

"Hypatia, Tia for short," she replied, tickled by the
young beings' responses. "Don't worry about where to
look, just assume I'm the whole ship. I am, you know. \
even have eyes in your quarters — " she chuckled at
Aldon's flush of embarrassment" — but don't worry, I
won't use them. Your complete privacy is important to us."

"I can show you the cabins, and you can pick the
ones you want," Alex offered. "They're all the same;
I'm just reserving the one nearest the main cabin for
Doctor Hollister-Aspen."

"Stellar!" Aldon enthused. "Wow, this is better than
the liner coming in! I had to share a cabin with Fred
and two other guys."

"Quite correct," Fred seconded. "I enjoyed Aldon's
company, but the other two were — dare I say —
spoiled young reprobates? High Family affectations
without the style, the connections, or the Family.
Deadly bores, I assure you, and a spot of privacy will be
welcome. Shall we, then?"

The two grad students were unpacking their carry-
on baggage when the two post-docs arrived, this time
singly. Treel arrived first, accepted the greetings with
the calm, intense demeanor of a Zen Master, and took
the first cabin she was offered.

Les Dimand-Taylor was another case altogether. It
was obvious to Tia the moment he came aboard —
without the automatic salute he made to her column —
that he was ex-military. He confirmed her assumption
as soon as Alex offered him a cabin.

"Anything will do, old man," he said, with a kind of
nervous cheer. "Better than barracks, that's for sure.
Unless—lady Tia, you don'thave anything thatmakes an
unexpected noise in the middle of the night, do you? I'm

i—"he laughed a little shakily"—I'mafiaid I'mjust
a little twitchy about noises when I'm asleep. What they
euphemistically call 'unfortunate experiences.' I'll keep
my door locked soldon'tdisturbanyonebut—"

"Give him the cabin next to Treel, Alex," she said
firmly. "Doctor Dimand-Taylor—"

"Les, my dear," he replied, with a thin smile. "Les to
you and your colleagues, always. Pulled me out of a tight
spot, one of you BB teams did. Besides, when people
hear my title they tend to start telling me about their
backs and innards. Hate to have to tell them that I'd only
care about their backs if the too, too solid flesh had been
melted off the bones for the past thousand years or so."

"Les, then," she said. "I assume you know Treel?"

"Very well. A kind and considerate lady. If you have
her assigned as my neighbor, she's so quiet I never
know she's there." He seemed relieved that Tia didn't
press him for details on the "tight spot" he'd been in.

"That cabin and hers are buried in the sound-proof-
ing around the holds," Tia told him. "You shouldn't
hear anything — and I can generate white-noise for
you at night, if you'd like."

He relaxed visibly. "That would be charming of you,
thanks awfully. My superior, Doc Aspen, told the others
about my litde eccentricities, so they know not to startle
me. So we should be fine."

He went about his unpacking, and Alex returned to
the main cabin.

"Commando," Tia said succinctly.

"That in his records?" Alex asked. "I'm surprised they
left that there. Not saying where, though, are they?"

"If you know where to look and what to look at, the
feet that he was a commando is in his records," she told
her brawn. "But where — that's not in the Institute file.
It's probably logged somewhere. Remember not to
walk quietly, my dear."

"Since I'd rather not get karate-chopped across the

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throat, that sounds like a good idea." He thought for a
moment and went off to his cabin, returning with what
looked like a bracelet with a bell on it. "These things
went into fashion a couple of months ago, and I bought
one, but I didn't like it." He bent over to fasten it
around his boot. "There. Now he'll hear me coming, in
case I forget to stamp." The bell was not a loud one, but
it was definitely producing an audible sound.

"Good idea — ah, here's the Man himself— Alex,
hefs going to need some help."

Alex hurried down to the lift area and gave Doctor
Aspen a hand with his luggage. There wasn't much of
it, but Doctor Aspen was not capable of carrying much
for long. Tia wondered what could have possessed the
Institute to permit this man to go out into the field
again.

She found out, once he was aboard. His staffimme-
diately dustered around him, fired with enthusiasm, as
soon as he was settled in his cabin. He asked permission
of Tia and Alex to move the convocation into the main
cabin and use one of her screens.

"Certainly," Tia answered, when Alex deferred to
her- She was quite charmed by Doctor Aspen, who
called her "my lady," and accorded to her all the atten-
tion and politeness he gave his students and
underlings.

As they moved into main room, Doctor Aspen
turned toward her column. "I am told that you have
some interest and education in archeology, my lady
Tia,"* he said, as he settled into a seat near one of the
side screens. "And you, too, Alex. Please, since you'll be
on-site with us, feel free to participate. And if you know
something we should, or notice something we miss,
feel tree to contribute."

Alex was obviously surprised; Tia wasn't She had
gleaned some of this from the records. Aspen's
students stayed with him, went to enormous lengths to

an on-site with him, went on to careers of their own full
of warm praise for their mentor. Aspen was evidendy
that rarest of birds: the exceptional, inspirational
teacher who was also a solid researcher and scientist

Within moments, Aspen had drawn them all into his
charmed circle, calling up the first team's records,
drawing his students — and even Alex — into making
observations. Tia kept a sharp eye out for the missing
member of the party, however, for she had the feeling
that Haakon-Fritz had deliberately timed his entrance
to coincide with the gathering of Aspen's students. Tia
figured that he wanted an excuse to feel slighted. She
wasn't going to give it to him.

She could — and did — hook herself into the
spaceport surveillance system, and she spotted
Haakon-Fritz coming long before he was in range of
her own sensors. Plenty of time to interrupt the
animated discussion with a subtle, "Gentlebeings, Doc-
tar Haakon-Fritz is crossing the tarmac."

Treel and Les exchanged a wordless look, but said
nothing. Aspen simply smiled, and rose from his chair,
as Tia froze the recording they had been watching.
Alex hurried down the stairs to intercept Haakon-Fritz
at the lift

So instead of being greeted by the backs of those
deep in discussion, the man found himself greeted by
the Courier Service brawn, met at the top of the lift by
the rest of his party, and given an especially hearty
greeting by his superior.

His expression did not change so much as a hair, but
Tia had the distinct feeling that he was disgruntled.
"Welcome aboard, Doctor Haakon-Fritz," Ha said, as
he shook hands briefly with the other members of his
party. "We have a choice of five cabins for you, if you'd

"If you have more than one cabin available,"
Haakon-Fritz interrupted rudely, speaking not to Tia,

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Arme McCaffrey &? Mercedes Lackey

who he ignored, but to Alex, "I would like to see them
all before I make a choice."

Tia knew Alex well enough by now to know that he
was angry, but he covered it beautifully. "Certainty;
Professor," he said, giving Haakon-Fritz the lesser of
his tides. "If you'll follow me—"

He led the way back into the cabin section, leaving
Haakon-Fritz to carry his own bags.

Treel made a little growl that sounded like disgust;
Fred rolled his eyes, which was the closest he could
come to a facial expression. "My word," Fred said, his
voice ripe with surprise. "That was certainly rude!"

"He ees a Practical Darweeneest," Tree! replied, with
a curl to her lip. "Your pardon, seer," she said to Aspen.
al know that you feel he ees a good scienteest, but I am
glad he ees not the one in scharge."

Fred was still baffled. "Practical Darwinist?" he said.
"Does someone want to explain to a baffled young veg-
gie just what that might be and why he was so rude to
lady Tia?"

Les took up the gauntlet with a sigh. "A Practical
Darwinist is one who believes that Darwin's Law
applies to everything. If someone is in an accident, they
shouldn't be helped, if an earthquake levels a city, no
aid should be sent, if a plague breaks out, only the cur-
rendy healthy should be inoculated; the victims should
be isolated and live or die as the case may be."

Fred's uneasy glance toward her column made Tia
decide to spare Les the embarrassment of stating the
obvious. "And as you have doubtless surmised, the
fanatical Practical Darwinists find the existence of
shellpersons to be horribly offensive. They won't even
acknowledge that we exist, given the option."

Professor Aspen shook his head sadly. "A brilliant
scientist, but tragically flawed by fanaticism," he said, as
he took his seat again. "Which is why he has gotten as
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185

solo Exploration dig — and refused to consider any
evidence that did not support his own peculiar party-
line. Now he is left to be the chief clerk of digs like
ours." He looked soberly into the faces of his four stu-
dents. "Let this be a lesson to you, gentlebeings. Never
let fanatic devotion blind you to truth."

"Or, in other words," Tia put in blithely, "the prob-
lem with a fanatic is that their brains turn to tofu and
they accept nothing as truth except what conforms to
their ideas. What makes them dangerous is not that
they'll die to prove their truth, but that they'll letyou die
_ or take you with them — to prove it"

"Well put, my lady." Doctor Aspen turned his atten-
tion back to the screen. "Now since I know from past
experience that Haakon-Fritz will spend the time until
takeoff sulking in his cabin — shall we continue with
our discussion?"

The Exploration team had left the site in good
shape; equipment stowed, domes inflated but sealed,
open trenches covered to protect them. The Evalua-
tion team erected two new living domes and a second
laboratory dome in short order, and settled down to
their work.

Everything seemed to be under control; now that
the team was on-site, even the sulky Haakon-Fritz fell
to and took on his share of the duties. There would
seem to have been no need for AH One-Oh-Three-
Three to remain on-planet when they could have been
making the rounds of "their" established digs.

But that was not what regulations called for, and
both Tia and Alex knew why, even if the members of
the team didn't. Regulations for a CS ship attached to
Institute duty hid a carefully concealed second agenda,
when the ship placed a new Exploration or Evaluation
team.

Archeological teams were put together with great

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care; not only because of the limited number of per-
sonnel, but because of their isolation. They were going
to be in clanger from any number of things—all of the
hazards that Tia had listed to Alex on their first mis-
sion. There was no point in exposing them to danger
from within.

So the prospective members of a given team were
probed, tested, and Psyched to a fair-thee-well, both for
individual stability and for interactive stability with the
rest of the team. Still, mistakes could be made, and had
been in the past. Sometimes those mistakes had led to a
murder, or at least, an attempted murder.

When a psychological problem surfaced, it was
usually right at the beginning of the stint, after the ini-
tial settling in period was over, and once a routine had
been established and the stresses of the dig started to
take their toll. About that time, if something was going
to go wrong, it did. The team had several weeks in
cramped quarters in transit to establish interpersonal
relations; ideal conditions for cabin fever. Ideal condi-
tions for stress to surface, and that stress could lead to
severe interpersonal problems.

So regulations were that the courier, whether BB or
fully-manned, was to manufacture some excuse to stay
for several days, with the ship personnel staying inside
and out of sight, but with the site being fully monitored
from inside the ship. The things they were to look for
were obvious personality conflicts, new behavioral
quirks, or old ones going from "quirk" to "psychosis."
Making sure there was nothing that might give rise to a
midnight axe murder. It would not have been the first
time that someone snapped under stress.

Alex was most worried about Les, muttering things
about post-trauma syndrome and the fragility of com-
bat veterans. Tia had her own picks for trouble, ij
trouble came — either Fred or Aldon, for neither one
of them had ever been on-site in a small dig before, and

until he went to the Institute, Aldon had never even
been off-planet. Despite his unpleasantness to her,
Haakon-Fritz was brilliant and capable, and he had
been on several digs before without any trouble surfac-
ing. And now that they were all on-site, while he was
distant, he was also completely cooperative, and his
behavior in no way differed from his behavior on pre-
vious digs. There was no indication that he was likely to
take his fanatic beliefs into his professional life. Fred
and Aldon had only been part of a crew of hundreds
with an Excavation team — where there were more
people to interact with, fewer chances for personality
stress, and no real trials to face but the day to day
boredom of repetitive work.

For the first couple of days, everything seemed to be
just fine, not only as far as the personnel were con-
cerned, but as far as the conditions. Both Tia and Alex
breathed a sigh of relief.

Too soon by half.

For that night, the winter rains began.

Tia had been sifting through some of the records
she'd copied at the base, looking for another potential
investment prospect like Largo Draconis. It was late;
very late — the site was quiet and dark, and Alex had
called it a night. He was in his cabin, just about at the
dreaming stage, and Tia was considering shutting
down for her mandated three hours of DeepSleep —
when the storm struck.

"Struck" was the operative word, for a wall of wind
and rain hit her skin hard enough to rattle her for a
moment, and that was followed by a blast of lightning
and thunder that shook Alex out ofbed.

"What?" he yelped, coming up out of sleep with a
shout "How? Who?"

He shook his head to clear it, as another peal of
thunder made Tia's walls vibrate. "What's going on?"

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189

he asked, as Tia sank landing-spikes from her feet into
the ground beneath her, to stabilize her position. "Ait
we under attack or something?"

"No, it's a storm, Alex," she replied absently, making
certain that everything was locked down and all her
servos were inside. "One incredible thunderstorm, I've
never experienced anything like it!"

She turned on her external cameras and fed them to
her screens so he could watch, while she made certain
that she was well-insulated against lightning strikes and
that all was still well at the site. Alex wandered out into
the main cabin and sat in his chair, awestruck by the
display of raw power going on around them,

Multiple lightning strikes were going on all around
them; not only was the area as bright as day, it was often
brighter. Thunder boomed continuously, the wind
howled, and sheets — no, entire linen-closets—of rain
pounded the ground, not only baffling any attempt at a
visual scan of the site, but destroying any hope of any
other kind of check. With this much lightning in the an;
there was no point even in trying a radio call.

"What's happening down at the site?" Alex asked
anxiously.

"No way of telling," she said reluctantly. "The
Exploration team went through these rains once al-
ready, so I guess we can assume that the site itself isn't
going to wash away, or float away. For the rest — the
domes are insulated against lightning, but who knows
what's likely to happen to the equipment? Especially in
all this lightning."

Her words proved only too prophetic; for although
the rain lasted less than an hour, the deluge marked a
forty-degree drop in temperature, and the effects of
the lightning were permanent

When the storm cleared, the news from the site was
bad. Lightning had not only struck the ward-off field
generator, it had slagged it There was nothing left but a

f-melted pile of plasteel and duraloy. Tia didn't see
how one strike could have done that much damage; the
generator must have been hit over and over. The backup
^as corroded beyond any repair, though Haakon-Fritz
and Les labored over it for most of the night Too many
parts had been ruined — probably while it sat in its crate
through who-knew-how-many transfers. Never once
undated and checked — and now Doctor Aspen's team
paid the price for that neglect

Tia consulted with Doctor Aspen in person the next
morning. There was little sign of the damage from
where they sat, but the results were undeniable. No
ward-off generator. No protection from native fauna,
from insectoids to the big canids. And if the huge
grazers, the size of moose, were to become aggressive,
there would be no way to keep them out of die camp.
Ordinary fences would not hold against a herd of
determined grazers; the last team had proved that

"I don't have a spare in the holds," Tia told the team
leader. "I don't have even half the parts you need for
the corroded generator. There were no storms like the
one last night mentioned in the records of the previous
team, but we should assume there are going to be
more. How many of them can you handle? Winter is
coming on, and I can't predict what the native animals
are going to do. Do you want to pull the team out?"

Doctor Aspen pursed his lips thoughtfully. "I can't
think of any reason why we should, my lady," he
replied. "The only exterior equipment that had no
protection was the ward-off generator. The first team
stayed here without incident all winter—there's noth-
ing large enough to be a real threat to us, so far as I can
tell. We'll have a few insects, perhaps, until first hard
frost — I imagine those jackal-like beasts will lurk
about and make a nuisance of themselves. But they're
hardly a threat"

Alex, feet up on the console as usual, agreed with the

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archeologist. "I don't see any big threat here, either.
Unless lightning takes out something a lot more vital."

Tia didn't like it, but she didn't challenge them,
either. "If that's the way you want it," she agreed. "But
we'll stay until the rains are over, just in case."

Stay they did; but that was the first and the last of the
major storms. After the single, spectacular downpour,
the rains came gently, between midnight and dawn,
with hardly a peal of thunder to wake Alex. She had to
conclude that the first storm had been a freak occur-
rence, something no one could have predicted, and
lost a little of her ire over the lack of warning from the
previous team.

But that still didn't excuse the corroded generator.

Still, the weather stayed cold, and the rain left coatings of
ice on everything. It would be gone by midniorning, but
the difficulty in walking around the site meant that the
team changed their working hours—beginning around
ten-hundred and finishing about twenty-two-hundred.
Despite his recorded disclaimer, Doctor Aspen insisted on
working alongside his students, and no one, not even
Haakon-Fritz, wanted him to risk a fell on theice.

Meanwhile, Tia made note of a disturbing develop-
ment. The sudden cold had sent most of the small
game and pest animals into hiding or hibernation.
That left the normally solitary jackal-dogs without their
usual prey, and in what appeared to be seasonal
behavior, they began to pack up for the winter, so that
they could take down the larger grazers.

The disturbing part was that a very large pack began
lurking around the camp.

Now Tia regretted her choice of landing areas. The
site was between her and the camp; that was all very
well, especially for observing the team at work, but the
dogs were lurking in the hills around the camp. And
with no ward-off generator to keep them out of it—

She mentioned her worry to Alex, who pointed out

that the beasts always scattered at any sign of aggres-
sion on the part of a human. She mentioned it again to
Doctor Aspen, who said the animals were probably just
looking for something to scavenge and would leave the
alone once they realized there was nothing to eat

there-

She never had a chance to mention it again.

With two moons, both in different phases, the nights
were never dark unless it was raining. But the flood-
lights at the site made certain that the darkness was
driven away. And lately, the nights were never silent
either; the pack of jackal-dogs wailed from the moment
the sun went down to the moment the rains began. Tia
quickly became an expert on what those howls meant;
the yipping social-howl, the long, drawn-out rally-cry,
and most ominous, the deep-chested hunting call. She
was able to tell, just by the sounds, where they were,
whether they were in pursuit, and when the quarry
had won the chase, or lost it.

Tia wasn't too happy about them; the pack num-
bered about sixty now, and they weren't looking too
prosperous. Evidently the activity at the site had driven
away the larger grazers they normally preyed on; that
had the effect of making all the smaller packs join up
into one mega-pack — so there was always some food,
but none of them got very much of it They weren't at
the bony stage yet, but there was a certain desperate
gauntness about them. The grazers they did chase
were escaping five times out of six — and they weren't
getting in more than two hunts in a night

Should /suggest that the team feed them? Perhaps take a
grav-sled and go shoot something and drag it m once every
couple of days? But would that cause problems later? That
would be giving the pack the habit of dependence on
humans, and that wouldn't be good. Could they lure
the pack into another territory that way, though? Or —
would feeding them make them lose their fear of

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humans? She couldn't quite make up her mind about
that, but the few glimpses she'd had of the pack before
sunset had put her in mind of certain Russian folk-
tales — troikas in the snow, horses foaming with panic,
and wolves snapping at the runners. Meanwhile, the
pack got a little closer each night before they faded into
the darkness.

At least it was just about time for the team to break off for
the night Once they were in their domes, they'd be safe.

As if in answer to her thought, the huge lights
pivoted up and away from the site, as they were
programmed to do, lighting a dear path for the team
from the site to the camp. When everyone was safely in
the domes, Les would turn them off remotely. So far,
the lights alone had kept the jackal-dogs at bay. They
lurked just outside the path carved by the lights, but
would not venture inside.

As if to answer that thought, the pack howled just as
the First of the team members emerged from the
covered excavation area. It sounded awfully close —

Tia ran a quick infrared scan.

The pack was awfully close — right on the top of the
hill to the right of the site!

The beasts stared down at the team—and the leader
howled again. There was no mistaking that how], not
when all the rest answered it. It was the hunt-call.
Quarry sighted; time to begin the chase.

And the leader was staring right at the archeologists.
The team stared back, sensing that there was some-
thing different tonight. No one stirred; not
archeologists, nor jackal-dogs. The beasts' eyes glared
red in the darkness, reflection from the work lights, but
no less disturbing for having a known scientific
explanation.

"Alex," she said tightly. "Front and center. We have a
situation."

He emerged from his cabin as if shot from a gun,

took one look at the screen, and pelted for the hold
where they kept the HA grav-sled.

Then the pack poured down the hillside in a furry
avalanche.

Haakon-Fritz took offlike a world-class sprinter,
leaving the rest behind. For all the attention that he
paid them, the rest of his team might just as well have
not existed.

Shettcrack! Aspen can't run—

But Les and Treel were not about to leave Aspen to
become the a la carte special; as if they had rehearsed
the move, they each grabbed one arm and literally
picked him up off his feet between them and started
running. Fred and Aldon grabbed shovels to act as
some kind of flank-guard. With the jackal-dogs closing
on them with every passing moment, the entire group
pelted off for the shelters,

They were barely a quarter of the way there, with
the jackals halfway down the hill and gaining momen-
tum, when Haakon-Fritz reached the nearest shelter.
He hit the side of the dome with a crash and pawed the
door open. He flung himself inside—

And slammed it shut; the red light coming on over
the frame indicating that he had locked it.

lAlex!'"Tia cried in anguish, as the jackal-dogs bore
down upon their prey. "Alex, do something!" She had
never felt so horribly helpless.

Grav-sleds made no noise — but they had hedra-
players and powerful speakers, meant both to
entertain their drivers and to broadcast prerecorded
messages on the fly. A blast of raucous hard-wire shat-
ter-rock blared out from beneath her — she got her
underbelly cameras on just as Alex peeled out in the
sled at top speed, music screaming at top volume.

The unfamiliar shrieks and howls behind them
startled the pack for a moment, and they hesitated,
then came to a dead halt, peering over their shoulders.

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195

The rock musk was so unlike anything they had ever
heard before that they didn't know how to react; Alex
plowed straight through the middle of them and they
shied away to either side.

He was never going to be able to make a pickup on
the five still running for their lives without the pack
being on all of them — but while he was on the move
with music caterwauling, the jackal-dogs hesitated to
attack him. And while he was harassing them, their
attention was on him, not on their quarry.

That must have been what he had figured in the first
place — that he would starde them enough to give the
rest of the team a chance to get to safety inside that
second dome. While the archeologists ignored what
was going on behind them and kept right on to the
second shelter, Alex kept making dives at the pack —
scattering them when he could, keeping the sled
between them and the team. It was tricky flying —
stunt-flying with a grav-sled, pulling crazy maneuvers
less than a meter from the ground. Not a lot of margin
for error.

He cornered wildly; rocking the sled up on one side,
skewing it over in flat spins, feinting at the pack leader
and gunning away before the beast had a chance to
jump into the sled. Over the sound of the wild music,
the warning signals and overrides screamed objection
for what Alex was doing. Alex challenged the jackal-
dogs with the only weapon he had; the sled. Tia longed
for her ethological pack; still not approved for the
Institute ships. With a stun-needler, they could have at
least knocked some of the pack out.

The animals assumed that the attack was meant to
drive them off or kill them. They must have been
hungrier than any of them had guessed, for when
nothing happened to hurt or kill any of the pack, they
began making attempts to mob the sled, and they
seemed to be trying to think of ways to pull it down.

-fla knew why, then, in a flash of insight Alex had just
gone from "fellow predator" to "prey"; the jackal-dogs
wrere used to grazer-bulls charging them aggressively to
try to drive them away. Alex was imitating the behavior of
the bulls, though he did not know it — and in better
times, the pack probably umdd have responded by
moving to easier prey. But these were lean times, and any
imitation of prey-behavior meant they would try to catch
and kill what was taunting them.

Alex was now in real danger.

But Alex was a better flyer than Tia had ever
thought; he kept the sled just out of reach of a strong
jump, kept it moving in unpredictable turns and spins.

Then, one of the biggest beasts in the pack leapt —
and landed, feet scrabbling on the back bumper of the
sled.

"Akx!" Tla shrieked again. He glanced back over his
shoulder and saw his danger.

He sent the sled into a spin; the sled's protection
overrides objected strenuously, whining as they fought
him. The jackal-dog fought, too, hind-claws skidding
against the duraloy of the bumper. Alex watched
desperately over his shoulder as the beast's claws found
a hold, and it began hauling itself over the bumper
toward him.

In what was either a burst of inspiration or insanity,
he jammed on the braking motors. The sled stopped
dead in mid-spin, flinging him sideways against his
safety-belts—

And flinging the jackal-dog off the back of the sled
entirely, sending it flying into die pack, and tumbling at
least a dozen of them nose-over-tail.

At that moment the team reached the second dome.

The flash of light as they opened the door told Alex
they were safe, and he no longer had to make a target
of himself. Alex burned air back towards Tia; she
dropped open a cargo-bay, activated restraint-fields

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197

and hoped he'd be able to brake in time to keep from
hitting the back wall. At the speed he was coming—the
restraint-fields, meant to keep the sled from banging
around too much in rough flight, wouldn't do much.

He didn't even slow down as he hit the bay door,
which she slammed down behind him. Instead, he
killed the power and skidded to a halt on the sled's belly
in a shower of sparks. The sled skewed sideways and
crashed into the back wall — but between Alex's own
maneuver and the restraint-fields, the impact wasn't
bad enough to do more than dent her hold-wall. Once
again, Alex was hurled sideways against his seat-belts.
There were a half-dozen impacts on the cargo door,
indicating the leaders of the pack hitting it, unable to
stop.

He sat there for a moment, then sagged over the
steering wheel, breathing heavily. Nothing on Tia's
pickups made her think he was hurt, so she waited for
him to catch his breath.

When his breathing slowed, and he looked up, she
focused on his face. He was-flushed, but showed no
shock, and no sign of pain.

"Well," she said, keeping her voice calm and light,
"you certainly know how to make an entrance."

He blinked — then leaned back in his seat, and
began laughing.

It was no laughing matter the next day, when
Haakon-Fritz emerged from his shelter and was con-
fronted by the remainder of his team. He had no
choice; Tia had threatened to hole his dome if he
didn't, giving the beasts a way inside. It was an empty
threat, but he didn't know that; like any other fanatic
Practical Darwinist, he had never bothered to learn the
capabilities of brainships.

Les took charge of him before he had a chance to say
anything; using some kind of commando-tactics to get

a hold on the man that immobilized him, then frog-
marching him into the ship.

By common consent, everyone else waited until Les
and Tia had secured Haakon-Fritz in one of her cabins,
with access to what was going on in the main cabin, but
no way of interrupting the proceedings. Any time he
started in on one of his speeches, she could cut him ofi^
and he'd be preaching to the bare walls.

As the others gathered in the cabin, Doctor Aspen
looking particularly shaken and worn, Tia prepared to
give them the news. It wasn't completely bad ... but
they weren't going to like part of it

"We aren't pulling you out," she said, "although
we've got that authority. We understand your concern
about leaving this dig and losing essentially two years,
and we share it."

As she watched four of the five faces register their
mix of relief and anticipation, she wished she could
give them unmixed orders.

"That's the good news," Alex said, before anyone
could respond. "Here's the bad news. In order to stay
here, we're going to order you to stay in your domes
until the next courier shows up with your new gener-
ator and parts for the old one. We ordered one for you
when the old one slagged; the courier should arrive in
about a month or two with the new one."

"But—" Doctor Aspen started to object

"Doctor, it's that, or we pull you right this moment,"
Tia said firmly. "We will not leave you with those canids
on the prowl unless you, each of you, pledge us that.
You didn't see how those beasts attacked Alex in his
sled. They have no fear of humans now, and they're
hungry. They'll attack you without hesitation, and I
wouldn't bet on them waiting until dark to do it."

"What's better?" Alex asked shrewdly. "Lose two
months of work, or two years?"

With a sigh, Doctor Aspen gave his word, as did the

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199

rest — although Fred and Aldon did so with visible
relief.

"If they'd just supply us with damned guns..." Les
muttered under his breath.

"There are sophonts on the other continent. 1 didn't
make the rules, Les," Tia replied, and he flushed. "I
didn't make them, but I will enforce them. And by the
letter of those rules, I should be ordering you to pack
right now."

"Speaking of packing — " Alex picked up the cue.
"We need you to bundle Haakon-Fritz* things and stow
them in the hold. He's coming back with us."

Now Les made no attempt to hide his pleasure, but
Doctor Aspen looked troubled. "I don't see any
reason — "he began.

"Sorry, Doctor, but we do," Alex interrupted.
"Haakon-Fritz finally broke the rules. It's pretty
obvious to both of us that he attempted to turn his
politics into reality."

In his cabin, the subject of discussion got over his shock
and began a shouted tirade. As she had threatened, Tia cut
him off— but she kept the recorders going. At the
moment, they couldn't prove what had been on die man's
mind when he locked his colleagues out With any luck, his
own words mightcondemn him.

"Doctor, no matter what his motivations were, he
abandoned us," Les said firmly. "One more fighter
might have made a difference to the pack — and the
feet remains that when he reached shelter, instead of
doing anything helpful, he ran inside and locked the
door. The former might only have been cowardice —
but the latter is criminal."

"That's probably the way the Board of Inquiry will
see it," Tia agreed. "We'll see to it that he has justice,
but he can't be permitted to endanger anyone else's life
this way again."

After a bit more argument, Doctor Aspen agreed.

team left the shelter of the ship, gathered what
they could from the dig, and returned to the domes.
Well before sunset, Les and Fred returned with a grav-
sled laden with Haakon-Fritz' belongings stowed in
crates — and by the rattling they were making, the
goods hadn't been stowed any too carefully.

Ha didn't intend to expend too much effort in stow-
ing the crates either.

"You'll keep everyone in the domes for us, won't
you?" Tia asked Les anxiously. "You're the one I'm
really counting on. I don't trust Doctor Aspen's com-
mon sense to hold his curiosity at bay for too long."

"You read him right there, dear lady," Les replied,
tossing the last of the crates off the sled for the servo to
pick up, "But the rest of us have already agreed. Tree!
was the most likely hold-out, but even she agrees with
you on your reading of the way those jackal-dogs were
acting."

"What will happen to the unfortunate Haakon-
Fritz?" Fred asked curiously.

"That's going to depend on the board," she told him,
"I've got a recording of him ranting in his cabin about
survival and obsolescence, and pretty much spouting
the extremist version of the Practical Darwinism party
line. That isn't going to help him any, but how much of
it is admissible, I don't know."

"Probably none of it to a court," Les admitted after
thought. "But the board won't like it"

"All of it's been sent on ahead," she told him. "Hell
probably be met by police, even if, ultimately, there's
nothing he can be charged with."

"At the very least, after this little debacle, he'll be
dropped from the list of possible workers for anything
less than a Class Three dig," Fred observed cheerfully.
"They'll take away his seniority, if they have any sense,
and demote him back to general worker. Hell spend the
rest ofhis life with us undeigrads, sorting pot-shards."

200

Arme McCaffrey & Mercedes Lackey

"Assuming he can find anyone who is willing to take a
chance on him," Alex responded. "Which I would
make no bets on."

He patted Tia's side. "Just be grateful you're not
having to go back with us," he concluded. "If you
thought the trip out was bad with Haakon-Fritz sulk-
ing, imagine what it's going to be like returning."

CHAPTER SEVEN

There was a message waiting for Tia when they
returned to the main base at Central, with Doctor
Haakon-Fritz still confined to quarters. A completely
mysterious message. Just the words, "Call this num-
ber," a voice-line number for somewhere in the L-5
colonies, and an ID-code she recognized as being from
Lars.

Now what was Lars up to?

Puzzled, she left the message in storage until Alex
completed the complicated transfer of their not-quite-
prisoner, and accompanied him and duplicate copies of
the records involving him down to the surface. Only
then, when she was alone, did she make the call.

"Friesner, Sherman, Stirling and Huff," said a
secretary on the first ring. There was no delay, so Tia
assumed that the office was somewhere in one of the
half-dozen stations or L-5 colonies nearby. "Invest-
ment brokers."

"I was told to call this number," Tia said cautiously. "I
— my name is Hypatia Cade — " She hesitated as she
almost gave her ship-numbers instead of her name.

"Ah, Miz Cade, of course," the secretary said, sound-
ing pleased. "We've been waiting for you to call. Let me
explain the mystery; Friesner, Sherman, Stirling and
Huff specialize in investments for shellpersons like
yourself. A Mister Lars Mendoza at Pride of Albion
opened an account for you here to manage the invest-
ments you had already made. If you'll hold, I'll see if
one of the partners is free — "

202

Anne McCaffirey fc? Mercedes Lackey

Tia hated to be put on hold, but it wasn't for more
than a microsecond. "Miz Cade," said a hearty-sound-
ing male voice, "I'm Lee Stirling; I'm your broker if
you want to keep me on, and I have good news for you.
Your investments at Largo Draconis have done very
well. Probably much better than you expected."

"I don't know about that," she replied, letting a litde
humor leak through. "My expectations were pretty
high." There was something about that voice that
sounded familiar, but she couldn't identify it Was it an
accent—or rather, lack of one?

"But did you expect to triple your total investment?"
Lee Stirling countered. "Your little seed money grew
into quite the mighty oak tree while you were gone!*1

" Uh—" she said, taken so much by surprise that she
didn't know what to say. "What do you mean by total
investment?"

"Oh — your companies split their bonds two times
while you were gone; you had the option of cash or
bonds, and we judged you wanted the bonds, at least
while the value was still increasing." Stirling was trying
to sound matter-of-fact, but couldn't keep a trace of
gloating out of his voice. "Those bonds are now worth
three times what they were after the last split"

"Split?" she said faintly. "I — uh—really don't know
what that means. I'm—new at this."

Patiendy Stirling walked her through exacdy what
had happened to her investment "Now the question
you have in front of you is whether you want to sell out
now, while the value of the bond is still increasing, or
whether you want to wait."

"What's happening on Largo Draconis?" she asked.
After all, her investment had been based on what was
going to happen in the real world, not the strange and
unpredictable universe of the stock market And from
the little she had seen, the universe of the stock market
seemed to have very little to do with "real" reality.

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203

"I thought you'd ask that. Your companies have
nretty much saturated their market," Stirling told her.
"The situation has stabilized —just short of disaster,
thanks to them. The bond prices are going up, but a lot
more slowly. I think they're going to flatten out fairly
soon. I'd get out, if I were you."

"Doit," she said flady. "I'd like you to put everything
I earned into Moto-Prosthetics, preferred stock, with
voting rights. Hold onto the seed money until I contact

H

you.

"Taking care of it now — there. All logged in,
Hypatia. I'm looking forward to seeing what you're
going to invest in next." Stirling sounded quite satis-
fied. "I hope you'll stay with us. We're a new firm, but
we're solid, we have a lot of experience, and we intend
to service our clients with integrity. Miz Friesner was
formerly a senior partner in Weisskopf, Dixon, Fries-
ner and Jacobs, and the rest of us were her handpicked
proteges. She's our token softie."

"Token — oh! You're all — "

"Shellpersons, right, all except Miz Friesner. Oh, we
all worked on the stock, bond, and commodity ex-
changes, but as systems managers. We couldn't do any
investments while we were systems managers, but Miz
Friesner agreed to join us when we bought out our
contracts." Stirling chuckled. "We've been planning
this for a long time. Now we're relying on grapevine
communications within the shell-net for those like us
who want to invest, for whatever reasons—and would
rather not go through either their Counselors, then-
Supervisors, or their Advocates." He sent her a compli-
cated burst of emoticons conveying a combination of
disgust, weariness, annoyance, and impatience. "We
are adults, after all. We can think for ourselves. Just
because we're rooted to one spot or one structure, it
doesn't follow that all of us need keepers."

She sent back a burst that mirrored his—with the

204

Anne McCaffrey fcf Mercedes Lackey

addition of amusement. "Some of us do — but not
anyone who's been out in the world for more than fifty
years or so, 7 wouldn't think. Well, 111 tell a couple of
friends of mine about you, that's for certain."

"Word of mouth, as I said." Stirling laughed. "I have
to tell you, after that phenomenal start, we're all very
interested in your next investment choice."

Til have it in a couple of days at most," she
promised, and signed off.

Well, now it was certainly time to start digging for
that second choice, and she couldn't hope to happen
on it the way she had the last time.

This time, it was going to take a combination of
stupidity on someone's part, and her own computa-
tional power. So she concentrated on sorting out those
colonies that had been in existence for less than a
hundred years. It was probably fair to assume that any-
thing repetitive that she would be able to take
advantage of would have to take place within that kind
of cycle.

That narrowed the field quite a bit — but it meant
that she was going to have to concentrate her search by
catagories. Floods were the first things that came to
mind, so she called up geological and climatological
records on all of her candidates and ran a search for
flood patterns.

Meanwhile she and Alex were also dealing with the
authorities on the Haakon-Fritz case — which looked
likely to put the Practical Darwinists out of business, at
least with the general public — and the Institute in
regards to resupply. Tia was determined not to leave
port this time without that ethological tagging kit Alex
was tired of dealing with each crisis barehanded.

He demanded a supply of firearms — locked up
until authorized if necessary, but he wanted to have
something to enforce his decisions or to defend himself
and others.

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205

"What if Haakon-Fritz had gone berserk?" he asked.
"What if those canids had been more aggressive?"

Courier Services was agreeable, but the Institute was
fighting him; their long-time policy of absolute
pacifism was in direct conflict with any such demand.
The ban was clear; on any site where there were near-
by sophonts with an Iron Age civilization or above —
and "nearby" meant on the same continent — ab-
solutely no arms were to be permitted in association
with any Institute personnel, not even those under
contract And since the couriers hit at least one dig on
every run that came under the ban, they were not
allowed any weaponry at any time. Tia backed her
brawn, and she was lobbying with CS and the Lab
Schools to help. After all, her well-being was partially
dependent on his. The Institute, on the other hand,
was balking because there were those who would take
the presence of even small arms on board the courier
in the worst possible interpretation.

Tia could see their point — but Institute couriers
were the only ones not carrying some kind of hand
weaponry. They were likely at any time to run into
smugglers, who absolutely would be armed. If CS made
a ruling on the subject, there would be no way the
Institute could get around it

Meanwhile, on the subject of Haakon-Fritz, things
were definitely heating up. The recordings of his
Olympic sprint to shelter had somehow gotten leaked
to the media — fortunately, long after Tia had locked
down her copies — along with the following recording
of Alex's heroic dash to the rescue via grav-sled. Alex
was a minor celebrity for a day — but he successfully
avoided the media, and they soon grew tired of his self-
deprecating attitude, and his refusal to make himself
photogenic. Haakon-Fritz did not avoid the media, he
sought them out — and he became everyone's favorite
villain. The Institute could not keep the incident quiet

206

Anne McCaffrey 6? Mercedes Lackey

The Practical Darwinists came to their proponent's res-
cue, and only made things worse with their public
statements of support and their rhetoric. People did
not care to hear that they were weaklings, failures, and
ought to be done away with for the good of the race. It
began to look as if there was going to be a public trial,
no matter how hard the Institute tried to avoid one.

It was on the eve of that trial that Tia finally found
her next investment project.

In the Azteca system, the third planet — predictably
Terran — known as Quetzecoad,

Interstellar Teleson, one of the major communica-
tions firms in their quadrant with cross-contracts and
reciprocal agreements across known space, had just
relocated their sector corporate headquarters on Quet-
zecoad. The location had a great deal to be said for it—
central, in the middle of a stable continental plate, good
climate. That, however, was not why they had relocated
there.

It was one of those secretly negotiated High Family
contracts, and Tia had no doubt that there was a lot
more at stake than just the area. Someone owed some-
one else a favor — or else someone wanted something
else kept quiet, and this was the price.

She was doubly sure when the location came up red-
flagged on her geological search. According to the survey
records, that lovely, flat plain was a flood basin. Quet-
zecoad did not have die kind of eccentric orbit that Largo
Draconis did —just a little tilt. One that didn't affect
anyone in the major setdements at all. But once every
hundred years, that tilt angled the north pole into the solar
plane tor a bit longer than usual. The glaciers would start
to melt The plain below wouldn't exactly "flood"—or at
least, notall at once. It would just get very, very soggy, slow-
ly — then, when the spring rains came, the water would
rise over the course of a week or two. Eventually the entire
plain would be under about two inches of water, and

THESHIP WHO SEARCHED

207

^ould remain that way for about three years, gradually
drying again for the fourth as the glaciers in die north

grew.

But Interstellar Teleson's Corporate Standards dic-
tated that the most sensitive records and delicate
instruments, and all their computer equipment, be
installed permanently in sub-basements no less than
four stories below surface level, to avoid any possibility
of damage. Corporate Standards had been set to guard
against human interference, not nature's. Corporate
Standards evidently did not consider nature to be
important.

Whoever was in charge of this project apparently
completely disregarded the geological survey.
Engineers complained about seepage and warned of
flooding; the reaction was to order extra sump pumps.
Sump pumps were keeping the sub-basements
tolerably dry now, but Tia guessed that they were going
constantly just to keep up with ordinary groundwater.
They were not going to handle the flood.

Especially not when flood waters were seeping in
through the ground floor walls and creeping over the
doorsUls.

According to the meteorological data, the glaciers
were melting, and the spring rains were only a couple
of months away.

Meanwhile, half a continent away, there was a dis-
aster recovery firm that specialized in data and
equipment recovery. They advertised that they could
duplicate an existing system in a month, and recover
data from devices that had been immersed in saltwater
for over a year, or through major fires with extensive
smoke damage. Interstellar Teleson was going to need
them, and they didn't even know it. Besides, Tia liked
the name. Whoever these people were, they had one
heck of a sense of humor.

Chuckling to herself, Tia called Lee Stirling and

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Anne McCaffrey Eg* Mercedes Lackey

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

209

made her investment — then sent out another care-
fully worded letter to Crash and Burn Data Recovery
Limited.

The public trial of Doctor Haakon-Fritz was a ten-
day circus — but by then, Tia and Alex had for more
serious things on their minds and no time to waste on
trivialities.

Tia's recordings — both at the site and in the main
cabin — were a matter of public record now, and that
was the only stake they had in the trial. The Institute
only wanted to keep from looking too foolish. In return
for the supply of small arms Alex demanded, they
asked that he not testify at the trial, since anything he
could say would only corroborate those records. They
both knew what the Institute people were thinking:
records were one thing, but a heroic participant, who
just might sound impassioned — no, that was some-
thing they didn't want to see. He was willing — he
reckoned it was a small price to pay. Besides, there was
little he could add, other than becoming another
source of media attention.

So while the media gathered, the quiet Institute
lawyers and spokesmen tried to downplay the entire
incident, Alex got his arms-locker, and Tia her
ethological kit as the price for their non-participation.
And as they prepared to head out on a new round of
duties, there came an urgent message.

The Institute contract was on hold; CS had another
use for them as the only B B ship on base.

And they suddenly found themselves, not only with
a new agenda — but an entirely new employer.

"Kenny, what is all this about?" Tia asked, when the
barrage of orders and follow-up orders concluded,
leaving them with a single destination, an empty flight
plan, and a "wait for briefing" message. So here they

ere docked with the Pride of Albion, and the briefing
orgs corning from Doctor Kennet Uhua-Sorg.

"This," Doctor Kennet replied, grimly, sending the
ijve-cam view of one of the isolation rooms.

Alex gasped. Tia didn't blame him.

The view that Doctor Kennet gave them of this, the
pride of Albion's newest isolation patient, was blessedly
brief- It had been a human at one point Now it was a
humanoid-shaped mass of suffering. Somewhere in
the mass of open sores were eyes, a mouth, a face.
Those had been hands, once—and feet

Tia was the first to recover. "Who is that," she asked
sharply, "and what happened to him?"

-Who — we don't know," Kenny replied, his face
completely without expression. "He was from a tramp
freighter that left him when he didn't get aboard by lift-
off time. We don't know if they expected something like
this, or if they were just worried because one of their
bogus crew turned up missing, but they burned out of
Yamahatchi Station with a speed that simply didn't
match their rather shabby exterior. He was under false
papers, of course — and there isn't enough of his
fingers or retinas left to identify him. And unless he's
ever been a murder or crime-of-violence suspect, his
DNA patterns could take years to match with his birth-
records."

Alex nodded. It wouldn't have been too difficult to
deduce his ship; anyone logging into a station hostel or
hotel had to list his ship-of-origin as well as filing his
papers. That information was instandy cross-checked
with the ship; the ship had to okay the crewman's ID
before he would be allowed to check in. Passengers, of
course, used an entirely separate set of hotels.

"That kind of speed probably means a pirate or a
smuggler," Alex said.

"I don't think there's much doubt of that," Kenny
replied. "Well, when his logged time at the cheap hostel

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he'd checked into ran out, they opened the door to his
room — found that — and very wisely slammed the
door and reported him."

"What about the hostel personnel?" Tia asked.

"We have them all in isolation, but so far, thank the
deity of your choice, none of them are showing any
signs of infection."

"For which favor, much thanks," Alex muttered.

*Just what is it that he's got?" Tia asked, keeping her
voice even and level.

Kenny shrugged. "Another plague with no name.
Symptoms are simple enough. Boils which become
superrating sores that seem to heal only to break open
again. A complex of viruses and bacteria, reinforced
with modified immune deficiency syndrome. So far, no
cure. Decontamination sterilized the hostel room com-
pletely, and we haven't seen anyone else come down
with this thing. And, thank the spirits of space, once he
checked into the hostel, door records show he never
left his room."

"There is no reason for a pirate to come down with
something like that," Tia pointed out, "but an artifact
smuggler—"

"Precisely why I asked for you two," Kenny replied,
"and precisely why the Institute loaned you to us. Oh,
Alex, in case you wondered, I'm in this because, despite
my specialty, I seem to have become the expert in dis-
eases associated with archeology."

Alex cast an inquiring glance at her column. Tia
knew what he was asking. Could this be the same dis-
ease their mysterious "Sinor" had told them about?
Could it be that the man had given them a true story,
though not his true name?

She printed her answer under Dr. Kenny's image.
It's a coincidence. Not the same as Smor's phony plague — he
would have been frantic if he truly had this to contend with.

He signaled his question with his eyes. Why?

deficiency. Contact or airborne. Think about it.

His eyes widened, and he nodded, slowly. The
nightmare that had haunted the human world since
the twentieth century; the specter of an immune
deficiency disease communicated by an airborne or
sjjnple-contact vector. No one wanted to think about it,
yet in the minds of anyone connected to the medical
professions, it was an ever-present threat.

"You two are a unique combination that I think has
the best chance to track this thing to its source," Kenny
said. "Medical Services will have more than one team
on this — but you're the only BB team available. The
Institute doesn't want any of their people to stumble on
the plague the hard way, so they subcontracted you to
Medical for the duration. I'm delegating the planning
of search patterns to you. Got any ideas on how to
start?"

"Right," Alex replied. "Then if that's what you want,
let's do this the smart way, instead of the hard way. First
off, what's the odds this could have come off a derelict
—station or ship—out in hard vacuum?"

"Odds? Not likely. Hard vacuum kills all of the bugs
involved. That does eliminate anything like an asteroid
or EsKay situation though, doesn't it?" Kenny looked
fairly surprised, as well as pleased. "Let me get Lars in
on this, he's been monitoring the poor devil."

It took a few moments for Lars to clear his boards
enough to have attention to devote to a vocal circuit
During that time, Tia thought of a few questions she'd
like to ask.

"Lars, has he said anything?" she asked, as soon as
Lars joined the conference call. "Something that could
give us clues?"

"Ravings mostly — do you think you can get any-
thing out of that?" Lars sounded fairly dubious. "It's
not as if he was an astrogator or anything. Mostly he's
been yammering on about the weather, besides the

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usual; either pain and hallucinations, or about
treasure and gold."

"The weather?" Tia responded immediately. "What
about it?"

"Here, I'll give you what I've got — cleaned up so
you can understand it, of course."

A new voice came over the circuit; harsh, with a gut-
tural accent. "Treasure... gold ... never saw s'much.
Piles'n'piles ... no moon, frag it, how c'n a guy see
anythin'.,. anythin' out there. No moon. Dark 'sa
wormhole. Crazy weather. Nothin' but crazy
weather ... snow, rain, snow, sleet, mud — how ya
s'pposed t' dig this stuffup in this?"

"That's basically it," Lars said, cutting the recording
off. "He talks about treasure, moonless, dark nights,
and crazy weather."

"Why not assume he's complaining about where he
was? Put that together with an atmosphere and — ?"
Tia prompted. "What do you get?"

"Right. Possible eccentric orbit, probably extreme
tilt, third-in Terra-type position, and no satellites."
Lars sounded pleased. "I'll get Survey on it."

"What about the likely range of the ship that left
him?" Tia asked. "Check with CenSec and Military; the
docks at Yamahatchi had to have external specs and so
forth on that ship. What kind of fuel did they take on, if
any? Docks should have external pictures. Military
ought to be able to guess at the range, based on that.
That should give us a search area."

"Good." Kenny made notes. "I've got another range
— how long it probably took for our victim to come
down with the disease once he was infected. Combine
that one with yours, and we should have a sphere
around Yamahatchi."

"Kenny, he couldn't possibly have shown any
symptoms while he was in space — they'd have pitched
him out the airlock," Tia pointed out. "That means he

probably went through incubation while they were in
pTL and only showed symptoms once they hit port."

"Right. I'll have that calculated for you and get you
the survey records for that sphere, then it'll be up to
you and the other teams." Kenny signed off, and Alex
swiveied his chair to face Tia's column.

"There's an information lag for that area," Alex
pointed out. "Yamahatchi is on the edge of known
space. Survey is still working out there — except for
really critical stuff, it's going to take weeks, months,
even years for information to make it here. We need a
search net, not just a couple of search teams."

"So — how about if we have Kenny call in not just
Medical Services, but Decontamination?" she asked.
"They don't have any BB teams either, but they do
have the AI drones and the med teams assigned to
them. They can run the net as well as we can, Slower,
but that may not be so bad."

"I'll get on it," Alex replied instantly. "He can be
mobilizing every free ship and team they've got while
we compute the likely targets."

"And Intelligence!" she added, as Alex got back on
the horn with Kenny and his team. "Get Kenny to get
in touch with Intel, and have their people inside that
sphere be on the watch for more victims, rumors of
plague or of plague ships, or ships that have
mysteriously lost half their crews!"

That would effectively increase their available eyes
and ears a hundred-thousandfold.

"Or of ships that vanish and don't come into port,"
Alex said grimly. "Somewhere along the line that so-
called tramp freighter is going to do just that; go into
hyper and never come out again. Or come out and
drift with no hand on the helm."

Tia wished she could still shiver; as it was, she felt
rather as if her hull temperature had just dropped to
absolute zero.

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No computer could match the trained mind for
being able to identify or discard a prospect with no data
other than the basic survey records. Alex and Tia each
took cone-shaped segments of the calculated sphere
and began running their own kind of analysis on the
prospects the computer search came up with.

Some were obvious; geologic instability that would
uncover or completely bury the caches unpredictable
Weather that did not include snow, weather that did
not include rain. Occupied planets with relatively thick
settlements, or planets with no continents, only tiny
island chains.

Some were not so obvious. Terrain with no real
landmarks or landmarks subject to change. Terrain
with snow and rain, but with snow piling up twelve feet
thick in the winter; too deep to dig in. The original
trove must have been uncovered by accident — per-
haps during the construction of a rudimentary base—
or by someone just outside, kicking around dirt.

Places with freelance mining operations were on the list;
agri-colonies weren't Places marked by the Institute for
investigation were, places with full Institute teams weren't.
While Tia would not have put it past someone with
problems to sell out to smugglers, she didn't think that
they'd care to cover up a contagious disease this hideous.

As soon as they finished mapping a cone, it went
out to a team to cover. They had another plan in mind
for themselves: covering free-trade ports, looking for
another victim. They could cover the ports a lot faster
than any of the AI or softperson-piloted ships; the
only one fester would have been someone with a Sin-
gularity Drive. Since those were all fully occupied —
and since, as yet, they had only one victim and not a
full-scale plague in progress — there was no chance
of getting one reassigned to this duty. So AH One-Oh-
Three-Three would be doing what it could — and

trying to backtrack the "freighter" to its origin point.
They were running against the clock, and everyone
on the project knew it. If this disease got loose in a
jajve, space-going population, the chances of checking
it before millions died were slender.

"Alex," Tia called for the third time, raising the
volume of her voice a little more. This time he
answered, even though he didn't turn his dark-circled
eyes away from his work.

"What, m'love?" he said absently, his gaze glued to a
topographical map on the screen before him, despite
the feet that he could hardly keep his eyes open.

She overrode the screen controls, blanking the one
in front of him. He blinked and turned to stare at her
with weary accusation.

"Why did you do that?" he asked. "I was right in the
middle of studying the geography — "

"Alex!" she said with exasperation. "You hadn't
changed the screen in half an hour; you probably
hadn't really looked at it in all that time. Alex, you
haven't eaten anything in over six hours, you haven't
slept in twenty, and you haven't bathed or changed your
clothes in forty-eight!"

He rubbed his eyes and peered up at the blank
screen. "I'm fine," he protested feebly.

"You're not," she countered. "You can hardly hold
your head up. Look at your hand shake! Coffee is no
substitute for sleep!"

He clenched his Fist to stop the trembling of his
hand. "I'm fine," he repeated, stubbornly.

She made a rude noise and flashed her screens at
him, so that he winced. "There, see? You can't even
control your reactions. If you don't eat, you'll get sick, if
you don't sleep, you'll miss something vital, and if you
don't bathe and change your clothes I'm turning you
over to Decontam."

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"All right, love, all right," he sighed, reaching over
and patting her column. "Heat me up something; m
be in the galley shortly."

"How shortly?" she asked sharply.

"As long as it takes for a shower and fresh dothes." He
pried himself up out of his chair and stumbled for his
room. A moment later, she heard the shower running _
and when she surreptitiously checked, she discovered
that as she had suspected, he was running it on cold.

Trying to wake up, hmm? Not when I want you to relax,
She overrode the controls — not bringing it all the way
up to blood-heat, but enough that he wasn't standing
in something one degree above sleet. It must have
worked; when he stumbled out into the galley, freshly
clothed, he was yawning.

She fed him food laden with tryptophane; he was too
tired to notice. And even though he punched for it, he
got no coffee, only relaxing herbal teas.

He patted her auxiliary console — this time as if he
were patting someone's hand to get her attention. He'd
been doing that a lot, lately — that and touching her
column like the arm of an old and dear friend. "Tia,
love, don't you realize we're almost dirough with this?
Two cones to go—three if you count the one I'm work-
ing on now— "

"Which I can finish," she said firmly. "I don't need to
eat, and I only need three hours of DeepSleep in twen-
ty-four. Yes, I knew. But you aren't going to get teams
out there any faster by killing yourself— and if you
work yourself until you're exhausted, you are going to
miss what might be the important due."

"But—** he protested, and was stopped by a yawn.

"No objections," she replied. "I can withhold the
data, and I will. No more data for another eight hours.
Consider the boards locked, brawn. I'm overriding
you, and if I have to, I'll get Medical to second me."

He was too tired to be angry, too tired even to object

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

217

In the past several days he had averaged about four
hours in each sleep period, with nervous energy
waking him long before he should have reawakened.
But the strain was taking its toll. She had the feeling he
was going to get that eight solid hours this time,
whether or not he intended to.

"You aren't going to accomplish anything half-
conscious," she reminded him. "You know what they
say in the Academy; do it right, or don't do it"

"I give up." He threw his hands up in the air and
shook his head. "You're too much for me, lover."

And with that, he wandered back into his cabin and
fell onto his bunk, still fully clothed. He was asleep the
moment he was prone.

She did something she had never done before; she
continued to watch him through her eye in his cabin,
brooding over him, trying to understand what had
been happening over the past several days.

She had forgotten that she was encased in a column,
not once, but for hours at a time. They had talked and
acted like — like ordinary people, not like brain and
brawn. Somehow, during that time, the unspoken,
unconscious barriers between them had disappeared.

And he had called her "love" or "lover" no less than
three times in the past ten minutes. He'd been calling
her by that particular pet name quite a bit

He had been patting her console or column quite a
bit, these past few days — as if he were touching
someone's hand to gain attention, soothe, or
emphasize a point.

She didn't think he realized that he was doing either
of those things. It seemed very absentminded, and very
natural. So she wasn't certain what to make or think of
it all. It could simply be healthy affection; some people
used pet names very casually. Up until now, Alex
hadn't, but perhaps until now he hadn't felt comfort-
able enough with her to do so. How long had they

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known each other anyway? Certainly not more than a
few months—even though it felt like a lifetime.

No, she told herself firmly. It doesn't mean a thing. Htfs
just finaUy gotten to know me well enough to bring all kis bar-
riers down.

But the sooner they completed their searches and
got out into space again, the sooner things would go
back to normal.

Let's see if I can't do two of those three cones before he wakes
tip....

Predictably, the port that the mysterious tramp
freighter had filed as its next port of call did not have
any record of it showing up. Tia hadn't really expected
it to; these tramps were subject to extreme changes of
flight plan, and if it had been a smuggler, it certainly
wouldn't log where it expected to go next.

She just hoped that it had foiled to show up because
the captain had lied—and not because they were drift-
ing out in space somewhere. She let Alex do all the
talking; he was developing a remarkable facility for
playing a part and very cleverly managed to tell the
absolute truth while conveying an impression that was
entirely different from the whole truth.

In this case, he left the station manager with the
impression that he was an agent for a collection agency
— one that meant to collect the entire ship, once he
caught up with it

Alex shut down the com to die station manager, and
turned his chair to face her screen and the plots of
available destinations.

"How do you do that?" she asked, finally. "How do
you make them think something entirely different
from the real truth?"

He laughed, while she pulled up the local map and
projected it as a holographic image. "I've been in
theater groups for as long as I can remember, once I

sot into school. My other hobby, the one I never took too
Seriously, even though they said I was pretty good. I
iust try to imagine myself as the person I want to be,
and figure out what of the truth fits that image."

"Well," she said, as they studied the ship's possible
destinations, "if I were a smuggler, where would I go?"

"Lermontov Station, Presley Station, Korngold Sta-
tion, Tung Station," he said, ticking them off on his
fingers. "They might turn up elsewhere, but the rest all
have Intel people on them; we'll know if they hit
there."

"Provided whoever Intel has posted there is worth
his paycheck. Why Presley Station?" she asked. "That's
just an asteroid-mining company headquarters."

"High Family in residence," he replied, leaning back
in his chair, and lacing his fingers behind his head.
"Money for valuable artifacts. Miners with money —
and not all of them are rock-rats."

"I thought miners were all—well, fairly crude," she
replied.

He shook his head. "Miners are people, and there
are all kinds out there. There are plenty of miners
looking to make a stake — and some of them outfit
their little tugs in ways that make a High Family yacht
look plain. They have money for pretties, and they don't
much care where the pretty came from. And one more
thing; the Presley-Lee y Black consortium will buy ore
hauls from anyone, including tramp prospectors, so
we have a chance that someone may actually stumble
on the trove itself. We can post a reward notice there,
and it'll be seen."

"Along with a danger warning," she told him. al only
hope these people believe it. Lermontov first, then
Tung, then Presley?"

"Your call, love," he replied comfortably, sending a
carefully worded notice to the station newsgrid. They
didn't want to cause a panic, but they did want people

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221

to turn in any due to the whereabouts of the freighter
And they didn't want anyone infected along the way. So
the news notice said that the ship in question might
have been contaminated with Anthrax Three, a
serious, but not fetal, variant of old Terran anthrax.

He finished posting his notice, and turned back to
her. "You're the pilot I'mjust along for the ride."

"It's the most efficient vector," she replied, logging
her flight plan with Traffic Control. "Three days to
Lermontov, one to Tung, a day and a half to Presley."

Despite Alex's disclaimer that he was only along for
the ride, the two of them did not spend the three days
to Lermontov idle. Instead, they sifted through all the
reports they'd gotten so far from the other teams, look-
ing for clues or hints that their mystery ship could have
made port anywhere else. Then, when they hit Ler-
montov, Alex went hunting on-station.

This time his cover was as a shady artifact dealer;
looking for entire consignments on die cheap. There
were plenty of people like him, traders with negotiable
ethics, who would buy up a lot of inexpensive artifacts
and forge papers for them, selling them on the open
market to middle-class collectors who wanted Co have
something to impress their friends and bosses with
their taste and education. Major pirates wouldn't deal
with them — at least, not for tike really valuable things.
But crewmen, who might pick up a load of pottery or
something else not worth the bigger men's time, would
be only too happy to see him. In this case, it was for-
tunate that Tia's hull was that of an older model
without a Singularity Drive; she looked completely
nondescript and a little shabby, just the sort of thing
such a man would lease for a trip to the Fringe.

Lermontov was a typical station for tramp freighters
and ships of dubious registration. Not precisely a pirate
station, since it was near a Singularity, it still had station
managers who looked the other way when certain

of ships made port, docks that accepted cash in
advance and didn't inquire too closely into papers, and
a series of bars and restaurants where deals could be
made with no fear of recording devices.

That was where Alex went — wearing one of his
neon outfits. Tia was terrified that he would be recog-
nized for what he was, but there was nothing she could
do about it. He couldn't even wear a contact-button;
the anti-surveillance equipment in every one of those
dives would short it out as soon as he crossed the
threshold. She could only monitor the station
newsgrids, look for more clues about "their" ship, and
hope his acting ability was as good as he thought it was.

Alex had learned the trick of drinking with someone
when you wanted to stay sober a long time ago. All it
took was a little sleight of hand. You let the quarry
drain his drink, switch his with yours, and let him drain
the second, then call for another round. After three
rounds, he wouldn't even notice you weren't drinking,
particularly not whenyou were buying the drinks.

Thank the spirits of space for a MedService credit account.

He started out in the "Pink Comet," whose neon
decorations more than outmatched his jumpsuit He
learned quickly enough there that the commodities he
wanted weren't being offered — although the rebuff
was friendly enough, coming from the bartender after
he had already stood the whole house a round. In feet,
the commodities being offered were more in the line of
quasi-legal services, rather than goods. The bartender
didn't know who might have what he wanted—but he
knew who would know and sent Alex on to the "Rim-
runners."

Several rounds later, he suffered through a comical
interlude where he encountered someone who
thought he was buying feelie-porn and sex-droids, and
another with an old rock-rat who insisted that what he

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wanted was not artifacts but primitive art "There's HQ
money in them arty-facts no more," the old boy in,
sisted, banging the table with a gnarled fist. "Then
accountants don't want arty-facts, the damn market's
gotg&tiad with 'em! I'mtellin'ya—primy-tiveaitisthe
next thing!"

It took Alex getting the old sot drunk to extract him-
self from the man — which might have been what the
rock-rat intended in the first place. By then he dis-
covered that the place he really wanted to be was the
"RockwalL"

In the "RockwalT he hit paydirt, all right — but not
precisely what he had been looking for.

The bar had an odd sort of quiet ambience; a no-
nonsense non-human bartender, an unobtrusive
bouncer who outweighed Alex by half again his own
weight, and a series of little enclosed table-nooks where
the acoustics were such that no sound escaped the table
area. Lighting was subdued, the place was immacu-
lately dean, the prices not outrageously inflated.
Whatever deals went on here, they were discrete.

Alex made it known to the bartender what he was
looking for and took a seat at one of the tables. In short
order, his credit account had paid for a gross of Betari
funeral urns, twenty soapstone figurines of Rg*kedan
snake-goddesses, three exquisite Utde crystal Kanathi
skulls that were probably worth enough that the
Institute and Medical would forgive him anything else
he bought, and — of all bizarre things to see out here
—a Hopi kachina figure of Owl Dancer from okl Terra
herself. The latter was probably stolen from another
crewman; Alex made a promise to himself to find the
owner and get it back to him — or her. It was not an
artifact as such, but it might well represent a precious
bit of tribal heritage to someone who was so far from
home and tribe that the loss of this kachina could be a
devastating blow.

His credit account had paid for these things — but
hose he did business with were paid in cash. Simply
nough done, as he discovered at the first transaction,
The seller ordered a "Rock'n'Run" — the bartender
came to the table with a cashbox. Alex signed a credit
chit for the amount of sale plus ten percent to the bar;
the bartender paid the seller. Everyone was happy.

He'd spoken with several more crewmen of various
odd ships, prompting, without seeming to, replies con-
cerning rumors of disease or of plague ships. He got
old stories he'd heard before, the Betan Dutchman, the
Hamecwwng, the Alice Bee. All ships and tales from pre-
vious decades; nothing new.

He stayed until closing, making the bartender
stretch his "lips" in a cheerful "smile" at the size of the
bills he was paying — and making the wait-beings
argue over who got to serve him next with the size of
his rips. He had remembered what Jon Chernov had
told him once about Intel people: They have to account
for every half-credit they spend, so they're as tightfisted as a cor-
porate accountant at tax time. If you're ever domg Intel work,
be a big spender. They'll never suspect you. And better a docked
paycheckfor overspending than a last look at the business end
of a needier.

Just before closing was when the Quiet Man came in,
As unobtrusive as they came, Alex didn't realize the man
was in the bar until he caught a glimpse of him talking
with the bartender. And he didn't realize that he was
coming towards Alex's table until he was standing there,

"I understand you're buying things," the Quiet Man
breathed. "I have some — things."

He opened his hand, briefly, to display a miniature
vase or bottle, a lovely thing with a rainbow sheen and a
style that seemed oddly familiar, although Alex
couldn't place it As if one had fused Art Nouveau with
Salvadore Dali, it had a skewed but fascinating
sinuousity.

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"That's the sort of merchandise I'm interested in, afl
right," Alex said agreeably, as he racked his brain, trying
to place where he had seen a piece like it before. "The
trouble is, it looks a little expensive for my pocket."

The Quiet Man slid in opposite Alex at a nod. "Not as
expensive as you think," the Quiet Man replied. "The
local market's glutted with this stuff." The Quiet Man's
exterior matched his speech; gray jumpsuit, pale skin,
colorless eyes and hair, features that were utterly
average. "I have about a hundred litde pieces like this
and I haven't been able to unload them, and that's a feet"

"I appreciate your honesty," Alex told him, allowing
his surprise to show through.

The Quiet Man shrugged. "You'd find it out sooner or
later. The bosses only wanted the big stuff. Some of the
other guys took jewelry; I thought they were crazy, since
it was only titanium, and the pieces weren't comfortable
to wear and a litde flimsy. But some of the earlier crews
must have brought back these perfume bottles, because I
haven't been able to dump even one. I was hoping if you
were buying for another sector, you'd be interested. I can
give you a good deal on the lot."

"What land of a good deal?" Alex asked.

The Quiet Man told him, and they began their bar-
gaining. They ended it a good half hour after the bar
was officially closed, but since Alex was willingly paying
liquor prices for fruit juice — all that was legal after-
hours — the bartender was happy to have him there.
The staff cleaned up around them, until he and the
Quiet Man shook hands on the deal.

"These aren't exactly ancient artifacts," the Quiet
Man had admitted under pressure from Alex, "They
can be doctored to look like 'em with a little acid-bath,
though. They're — oh — maybe eight, nine hundred
years old. Come from a place colonized by one of the
real early human slowships; colony did aU right for a
while, then got religion and had themselves a religious

u wiped each other out until there wasn't enough to
be self-sustaining. We figured the last of them died out
maybe two hundred years ago. Religion. Go figure."

Alex eyed his new acquisition with some surprise.
"This's human-made? Doesn't look id"

The Quiet Man shrugged. "Beats me. Bosses said
the colonists were some kind of artsy-craftsy back-to-
nature types. Had this kind of offshoot of an
earth-religion with sacramental hallucinogenics
thrown in to make it interesting, until somebody
decided he was the next great prophet and half the
colony didn't see it that way. I mean, who knows with
that kind? Crazies."

"Well, I can make something up that sounds pretty
exotic," Alex said cheerfully. "My clients won't give a
damn. So, what do you want to do about delivery?"

"You hire a lifter and a kid from SpaceCaps," the
Quiet Man said instantly. "I'll do the same. They meet
here, tomorrow, at twelve-hundred. Your kid gives
mine the credit slip, mine gives yours the box. Make
the slip out to the bar, the usual."

Since that was exactly the kind of arrangement Alex
had made for the gross of funeral urns, with only the
time of delivery differing, he agreed, and he and the
Quiet Man left the bar and went their separate ways.

When he returned to the ship, he took the stairs
instead of the lift, still trying to remember where he had
seen the style of die tiny vase.

"You look cheerful!" Tia said, relief at his safe return
quite evident in her voice.

"I feel cheerful. I picked up some artifacts on the
black market that I'm sure the Institute will be happy to
have." He emptied his pockets of everything but the
"perfume bottle" and laid out his "loot" where Tia
could use her close-up cameras on the objects. "And
this, I suspect, is stolen — " He unwrapped the
kachina. "See if you can find the owner, will you?*1

226	Anne McCaffreytf Mercedes Lackey

"No problem," she replied absently. "I've been foU
lowing your credit chit all over the station; that's how I
figured out how to keep track of you. Alex, the two end
skulls are forgeries, but the middle one is real, and
worth as much as everything you spent tonight"

"Glad to hear it" He chuckled. "I wasn't sure what I
was going to say to the Institute and Medical if they
found out I'd been overtipping and buying rounds for
the housel All right, here's my final find, and I have a
load of them coining over tomorrow. Doyou remember
what the devil this is?"

He placed the warped litde vase carefully on the con-
sole. Tia made a strange litde inarticulate gargle.

"Alex!" she exclaimed. "That's one of Smor*s

artifacts!"

He slapped his forehead with the heel of his hand.
"Of course! That's why I couldn't remember what book
I'd seen it in! Spirits of space—Tia, I just made a deal
with the crewman of the ship that's running these
things in for a whole load of them! He said — and I
quote — 'the bosses only wanted the bigger stuff.1
They're not really artifacts, they're from some failed
human art-religious colony."

"I'm calling the contact number Sinor gave us," she
said firmly. "Keep your explanations until I get some-
one on the line."

Tia had been ready to start sending her servos to
pick lint out of the carpet with sheer nerves until she
figured out that she could trace Alex's whereabouts by
watching for his credit number in the station database.
She followed him to three different bars that way, wind-
ing up in one called "Rockwall," where he settled down
and began spending steadily. She called up the drink
prices there, and soon knew when he had made an
actual artifact purchase by the simple expedient of
which numbers didn't match some combination of the

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

227

drink prices. A couple of times the buys were obvious;
no amount of drinking was going to run up numbers
jjlte he'd just logged to his expense account

She had worried a litde when he didn't start back as
soon as the bar closed—but drinks kept getting logged
in, and she figured then, with a litde shiver of anticipa-
tion, that he must have gotten onto a hot deal.

When he returned, humming a little under his
breath, she knew he'd hit paydirt of some kind.

The artifacts he'd bought were enough to pacify the
Institute—but when he brought out the litde vase, she
thought her circuits were going to fry.

The thing's identification was so obvious to her that
she couldn't believe at first that he hadn't made the
connection himself. But then she remembered how fal-
lible sofiperson memory was....

Well, it didn't matter. That was one of the things she
was here for, after all. She grabbed a com circuit and
coded out the contact number Sinor had given her,
hoping it was something without too much of a lag time.

She could not be certain where her message went to
— but she got an answer so quickly that she suspected
it had to come from someone in the same real-space as
Lermontov. No visual coming through to them, of
course — which, if she still had been entertaining the
notion that this was really an Institute directive they
were following, would have severely shaken her con-
victions. But knowing it was probably the Drug
Enforcement Arm — she played along with the polite
fiction that the visual circuit on their end was mal-
functioning, and let Alex repeat the details of the deal
he had cut, as she offered only a close-up of the little
vase.

"Go through with it," their contact said, when Alex
was done. "You've done excellent work, and you'll be
getting that bonus. Go ahead and receive the consign-
ment; we'll take care of the rest and dear out the debits

228

Anne McCaffrey 67 Mercedes Lackey

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

229

on that account for you. And don't worry; they'll never
know you weren't an ordinary buyer."

There was no mention of plague or any suggestions
that they should take precautions against contamina-
tion. Alex gave her a significant look,

"Very well, sir," he only said, with carefully formality.
"I hope we've accomplished something here for you."

"You have," the unknown said, and then signed off.

Alex picked up the little vase and turned it around
and around in his hands as he sat down in his chair and
put his feet up on the console. Tia made the arrange-
ments for the two messengers to come to the ship for
the credit chits and then to the bar for the pickups —
fortunately, not at the same time. That didn't take more
than a moment or two, and she turned her attention
back to Alex as soon as she was done.

"Was that stupid, dumb luck, coincidence, or were
we set up?" she asked suspiciously. "And where was that
agent? It sounded like he was in our back pocket!"

"I'm going to make some guesses," Alex said, care-
fully. "The first guess is that we did run into some plain
good luck. The Quiet Man had tried all the approved
outlets for his trinkets — oudets that the Arm doesn't
know about — and found them glutted. He was
desperate enough to try someone like me. I suspect his
ship pulls out tomorrow or the next day."

"Fine—but why go ahead and sell to you if he didn't
know you?" Tia asked.

"Because I was in the right bar, making all the right
moves, and I didn't act like the Arm or Intel." Alex
rubbed his thumb against the sides of the vase. "I was
willing to go through the barkeep to pay, which I don't
think Intel would do. I had the right 'feel,' and 1
suspect he was watching to see if any of his buddies got
picked up after they sold to me. And lastly, once again,
we were lucky. Because he doesn't know what his bosses
are using the phony artifacts for. He thought the worsr

that could happen is a wrist-slap and fine, for import-
ing art objects without paying customs duty on them."

"Maybe his bosses aren't using the artifacts for smug-
gling/ sne pointed out, thinking out all the
possibilities. "Maybe they are just passing them on to a
second party."

"In this station, that's very possible." Alex put the
vase down carefully. "At any rate, I think the Arm
suspected this duster of stations all along, and they've
got a ship out here somewhere — which is why we got
an answer so quickly. I thought that was a ship-contact
number when I saw it, but I didn't say anything."

"Hmm." Tia ran through all the things she would
have done next and came up with a possible answer.
"So now they just find the messenger that goes to
'RockwalT at noon from a ship that isn't ours, and tags
the ship for watching? Or is that too simple?"

Alex yawned and stretched. "Probably," he said,
plainly bored with the whole game now. "He probably
won't send the messenger from his ship. They'll do
their spy-work somehow; we just gave them what they
didn't have in the first place, a contact point. It's out of
our hands, which is just as well, since I'd rather not get
involved in a smuggler versus Intel shoot-out. I'm
tired"

"Then you should get some rest," she said immedi-
ately. "And get that jumpsuit out of my cabin before it
burns out my optics."

He laughed — but he also headed straight for his
bed.

Tia didn't even bother to wake her brawn as she
approached Presley Station and hailed their traffic
control. She expected the usual automated Al most
mining stations had; she got a human. Although it was
audio-only, there was no doubt that this was a real
human being and not an Al-augmented recording.

230

Anne McCaffrey &? Mercedes Lackey

Because, from the strain in the voice, it was a very
nervous and unhappy human.

"AH-One-Oh-Three-Three, be advised we are under
a Code Five quarantine," the com officer said, with the
kind of hesitation that made her think he wasn't on a
microphone very often. "We can let you dock, and we
can refuel you with servos, but we can't permit you to
open your airlock. And we'd like you to move on to
some other station if you have the reserves."

He can't deny us docking under a Code Five, but he's
frightened. And he really wants us to go away.

Tia made a quick command decision. "Presley Sta-
tion, be advised that we are on assignment from
CenCom Medical. References coming now." She sent
over her credentials in a databurst. "We're coming in,
and we'd appreciate Presley Station's cooperation.
We'd like to be connected to your Chief Medical Officer
while we maneuver for docking, please."

"Uh — I — " There was a brief muttering, as if he was
speaking to someone else, then he came back on the mike.
"We can do that Stand by for docking instructions."

At that point the human left the com, and the Al took
over; she woke up Alex and briefed him, then gave him
a chance to get dressed and gulp some coffee while she
dealt with the no longer routine business of docking.
As she followed the AI's fairly simple instructions, she
wondered just what, exactly, was going on at Presley
Station.

Was this the start of the plague, or a false alarm?

Or—was this just one outbreak among many?

She waited, impatiently, for the com officer to return
online, while Alex gulped down three cups of coffee
and shook himself out of the fog of interrupted sleep. It
took forever, or at least it seemed that way.

Finally the com came alive again. "AH-One-Oh-
Three-Three, we have the Chief Medical Officer online
for you now." It was a different voice; one with more

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

231

authority. Before Tia could respond, both voice and
visual channels came alive, and she and Alex found
themselves looking into the face of a seriously
frightened man, a man wearing medical whites and the
insignia of a private physician.

"Hello?" the man said, tentatively. "You — you're
from MedServices? You don't look like a doctor."

"I'm not a doctor," Alex said promptly. "I've been
authorized by CenCom MedServices to investigate a
possible outbreak of a new infectious disease that
involves immune deficiency syndrome. We had reason
to believe that there's an infectious site somewhere in
this sphere, and we've been trying to track the path of
the last known victim."

There was no doubt about it; the doctor paled. "Let
me show you our patient," he whispered, and reached
for something below the screen. A second signal came
in, which Tia routed to her side screen.

The patient displayed suppurating boils virtually
identical to Kenny's victim; the only difference was that
this man was not nearly so far gone as the first one.

"Well, he matches the symptoms of the victim we've
been tracking," Alex said, calmly, while Tia made fran-
tic adjustments to her blood-chemistry levels to get her
heart calmed down, "I trust you have him in full isola-
tion and quarantine."

"Him and his ship," the doctor replied, visibly shak-
ing. "We haven't had any new cases, butdecom it, we
don't know what this is or what the vector is or—"

"I've got a contact number coming over to you right
now," Alex interrupted, typing quickly. "As soon as you
get off the line with me, get onto this line; it's a double-
bounce link up to MedServices and a Doctor Rennet
Uhua-Sorg. He's the man in charge of this; he has the
first case in his custody, and he'll know whatever there
is to know. What we'd like is this; we're the team in
charge of tracking this thing to its source. Do you know

232

Anne McCaffreyf^ Mercedes Lackey

anything about where this patient came from, what he
was doing—"

"Not much," the doctor said, already looking
relieved at the idea that someone at CenCom was "in
charge" of this outbreak. Tia didn't have the heart to let
him know how little Kenny knew; she only hoped that
since they'd left, he'd come up with something more in
the way of a treatment. "He's a tramp prospector; he
came in here with a load we sealed off, and sick as a dog
— crawled into port under his own power, but he col-
lapsed on the dock as soon as he was out of the ship,
yelling for a medic. We didn't know he was sick when
we let him dock, of course — "

The man was babbling, or he wouldn't have let that
slip. Interstellar law decreed that victims of disease be
given safe harborage within quarantine, but Tia had
no doubt that if traffic control hadn't been an AI, the
prospector would have never gotten a berth. At best,
they would have denied him docking privileges; at
worst, they'd have sent a fighter out to blast him into
noninfectious atoms. She made a mental note to send
that information on to Kenny with their initial report

« — when he collapsed and one of the dockworkers
saw the sores, he hit the alarm and we sealed the dock
off, sent in a crew in decontam suits to get him and put
him into isolation. I sent off a Priority One to our PTA,
but it takes so long to get an answer from them—"

"Did he say where he thought he caught this?" Alex
said, interrupting him again.

The doctor shook his head. "He just said he was out
looking for a good stake when he stumbled across
something that looked like an interstellar rummage
sale, and he figures that was where he got hit- What he
meant by 'interstellar rummage sale' he won't say. Just
that it was a lot of 'stuff * he didn't recognize."

Well, that matched their guess as to the last victim.

"Can we talk to him?" Tia asked.

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

233

The doctor shrugged. "You can try. I'll give you
audiovisual access to the room. He's conscious and
coherent, but whether or not he'll be willing to tell you
anything, I can't say. He sure won't tell us much."

It was fairly obvious that he was itching to get to a
comset and get in contact with MedServices, thus, sym-
bolically at least, passing the problem up the line. If his
bosses cared about where the miner had picked up the
infection, they hadn't told him about it.

Not too surprising. He was a company doctor. He
was supposed to be treating execs for indigestion, while
his underlings patched up miners after bar fights and
set broken bones after industrial accidents. The worst
he was ever supposed to see was an epidemic of
whatever new influenza was going around. He was not
supposed to have to be dealing with a plague, at least,
not by his way of thinking. Traffic control was sup-
posed to be keeping plague ships from ever coming
near the station.

"Thanks for your cooperation, Doctor," Alex said
genially. "Get that link set up for us, if you would, and
we'll leave you to your work."

The doctor signed off— still without identifying
himself, not that Tia was worried. Her recordings were
enough for any legal purposes, and at this point, now
that he had passed authority on to them, he was a non-
entity. They didn't need to talk to him anymore. What
they needed was currently incarcerated in an isolation
room on that station — and they were going to have to
figure out how to get him to talk to them.

"Okay, Alex," she said when the screen was safely
blank. "You're a lot closer to being an expert on this
than I am. How do we get a rock-rat to tell us what we
want to know?"

"Hank, my name's Alex," the brawn said, watching
the screen and all the patient-status readouts

234

Anne McCaffrey & Merc&fa Lackey

alongside. "I'm a brawn from CS, on loan to Med-
Services; you'll hear another voice in a moment, and
that's my brainship, Tia."

"Hello, Hank," she said, very glad that she was safely
encased in her column with no reactions for Hank to
read. Alex was doing a good job of acting; one she knew
she would never be able to match. Just looking at Hank
made her feel — twitchy, shivery, and quite uncomfort-
able; sensations she hadn't known she could still have.
"I don't know if anyone bothered to tell you, but we
were sent out here because there's someone else with
what you've got; it's very contagious, and we're trying
to keep it from turning into a plague. Will you help
us?"

"Give him the straight story," Alex had said; Kenny had
agreed to that when they got hold of him, right after
the company doctor had called him. "There's no point in
trying to trick him. If he knows how bad off he is, he just might
be willing to cooperate."

The sores only grew worse when you bandaged
them, so Hank was lying in a gel-bed — a big pan fuU oi
goo, really, with a waterbed mattress beneath the goo.
Right now only the opaque green gel covering him was
keeping him from outraging modesty. The gel was a
burn-treatment, and something Kenny had come up
with for the other man. He was still alive, but no better
than when they had left. They still had no idea who or
what he was, besides horribly unlucky.

Hank peered up at the screen in the corner of hit
room, through a face grotesquely swollen and broken
out. "These company goons won't give me any kind o;
a straight story," he said hoarsely. "All they do is try an
brush me off. How bad offam I?"

"There's no cure," Alex said, flatly. "There's on<
other known victim. The other man is worse than you,
and they haven't found anything to reverse his condi
tion. That's the truth."

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

235

Hank cursed helplessly for about four or five
minutes straight before he ran out of breath and
words. Then he lay back in the gel-bed for another
couple of minutes with his eyes dosed.

Tia decided to break the silence. "I don't know how
you feel about the rest of the universe, Hank, but—we
need to know where you came down with this. If this
got loose in any kind of population—"

" 'Sail right, lady," he interrupted, eyes still closed.
"You're preachin' to the choir. Ain't no percentage in
keeping my mouth shut now." He sighed, a sound that
sounded perilously close to a sob. "I run across this
place by accident, and I ain't sure how I'd find it again
—but you guys might be able to. I give you what data I
got I'd surely hate t' see a kid in the shape I'm in right
now."

"Thanks, Hank," Alex said, with quiet gratitude. "I
wish there was something we could do for you. Can
you think of anything you'd like?"

Hank shook his head just a little. "Tell you what; I
got some serious hurt here, an' what they're given me
ain't doin' much, 'cause they're 'fraid I'm gonna get
hooked. You make these bozos give me all the pain
meds I ask for—if I ever get cured up, I'll dry outthen.
You think you can do that for me?"

"I'll authorize it," Tia said firmly. At Alex's raised
eyebrow, she printed: Kenny's authorizations include
patient treatments. We've got that power, and it seems cruel not
to give him that much relief.

Alex nodded. "Okay, Hank, my partner says she can
boss the docs here. So, fire away; we're recording.
Unless you want something now."

"Naw. I wanta stay on this planet long enough t' give
you what little info I got." Hank coughed. "First off, my
boat's an old wreck; falls outa hyper all the time, and
the recorder don't always work when she takes a dive.
Basically, what happened was she fell out, and there

236

Anne McCaffrey &? Mercedes Lackey

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

237

was a Terra-type planet not too far from where she
dropped. My holds was pretty empty, so I figured I'd
see if there was anything around. Registered somethin'
that looked like wrecked buildings in one spot, went
down t' take a look-see."

"That was where you caught this thing?" Alex asket {

"I'm gettin' to that. Weren't no signs of life, oka\•;
But there was some buildings there, old and kind;,
busted up, round, like them flyin* saucers people usec
to see — I figgered maybe I'd hit some place where tht
archies hadn't got to, mebbe I could pick up somethin
I could peddle. I went ahead an' landed, okay? Only }
found somethin' that looked like somebody else hat!
been there first. Looked like — I dunno, lih
somebody'd been collectin' and hoardin' for a long
long time, buryin' the stuffin caves by the building,
stashin' it in the buildings that wasn't busted up. Son <
of it was dug up already, some of it somebody'd ju
started t'dig up."

"How do you mean?" Alex asked.

"Like — somebody's kid's idea of a treasure plac
Caves, lots of *em, some of'em dug up, all of 'eiii
prob'ly had stuffin 'em.1* Hank's voice started to slur
with fatigue, but he seemed willing to continue, so Tia
let him.

"Anyway, I got down there, grabbed some of the
good stuff, took lots of holos so if I ever figured out
where it was, I could stake a legal claim on it.** He
sighed. "I was keepin' my mouth shut, partly 'cause I
don't trust these company goons, partly 'cause I
figured on goin' back as soon as I got cured." He
coughed, unhappily. "Well, it don't much look like I'm
gonna get cured up any time soon, does it?"

"I can't promise anything but the pain meds, Hank,"
Tia said softly.

"Yeah." He licked cracked and swollen lips with a
pale tongue. "Look, you get into my ship. See if the

(jainn recorder was workin' at all. Get them holos, see if
you can figure out where the devil I was from 'em. You
cmys are CS, ev'body knows you can trust CS — if
there's anything I can get outa this, see what you can
do, okay?" The last was more of a pathetic plea than
anything else.

"Hank, I can guarantee you this much — since
you've cooperated, there's some kind of reward system
with MedService for people who cooperate in dosing
down plagues," Alex said, after a few moments of
checking with regs. "It includes all medical covered —
including prosthetics and restorations—and full value
of personal possessions confiscated or destroyed. That
should include your ship and cargo. We'll itemize the
real value of your cargo if we can."

Hank just sighed—but it sounded relieved. "Good,"
he replied, his voice fading with exhaustion. "Knew I
could ... trust CS. Lissen, can I get some'f that pain
med now?"

Tia logged the authorization and activated the servo-
nurse. "Coming up, Hank," she said. The man turned
his head slightly as he heard the whine of the motor,
and his eyes followed the hypospray until it touched his
arm. "From now on, you just voice-activate the servo—
tell it 'DM-Tia' and it will know what to give you."
There was a hiss — then for one moment, what was left
of his swollen lips curved in something like a smile. Tia
closed down the link, after locking in die "on-demand"
authorization. It would take someone from CenCom
MedServices to override it now.

Meanwhile, Alex had been arguing with Dock Ser-
vices, and finally had to pull rank on them to get access
to the controls for the dock servos and remotes. Once
that was established, however, it was a matter of
moments for Tia to tie herself in and pick out a servo
with a camera still inside the quarantined area to send
into the ship.

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Anne McCaffrey 6f Mercedes Lackey

THESHIP WHO SEARCHED

239

She selected the most versatile she could find; one
with a crawler base, several waldos of various size and
strength, and a reasonable optical pickup. "We aren't
going to tell them that hard vacuum kills the bugs yet,
are we?" she asked, as she activated the servo and sent it
crawling towards the abandoned dock.

"Are you kidding?*1 Alex snorted. "Given the pass-
the-credit attitude around here, I may never tell diem.
Let Kenny do it, if he wants, but I'd be willing to bet
that the moment we tell them, they'll seal off the section
and blow it, then go in and help themselves to
whatever's on Hank's ship before we get a chance to
make a record of it"

"I won't take that bet," she replied, steering the
crawler up the ramp and into the still-gaping airlock.

Hank hadn't exaggerated when he'd said his ship
was a wreck; it had more patches and make-dos on it
than she had dreamed possible on a ship still in space
and operating. Half the wall-plates were gone on the
inside of the lock; the floor-plates were of three dif-
ferent colors. And when she brought the crawler into
the control cabin, it was obvious that the patchworking
probably extended to the entire ship.

Exposed wiring was everywhere; the original con-
trol panels had long ago been replaced by panels
salvaged from at least a dozen other places. Small
wonder the ship had a tendency to fall out of hyper;
she was surprised it ever managed to stay m hyper, with
all the false signals that should be coming off those
boards.

"You think the recorder caught where he went?"
Alex asked doubtfully, peering at the view in the
screen. The lighting was in just as poor shape as
everything else, but Tia had some pretty sophisti-
cated enhancement abilities, and the picture wasn't
too bad. The ship's "black box" recorder, that should
have registered everything this poor old wreck had

done, was in no better shape than the rest of the ship.

"Either it did, or it didn't," she said philosophically.
«\Ve'H have a pattern of where he was supposed to be
p-oinfr though, and where he thought he was heading
when he left our little plague-spot We should be able
to deduce the general area from that."

"Ah, and since we know the planetary type, if Survey
ever found it, we'll know where it is." Alex nodded as
his hands raced across the keyboards, helping Tia with
the complex servo. "Look, there's the com, I think. Get
the servo a little closer, and I'll punch up a link to us."

"Right." She maneuvered the crawler in between
two seats with stuffing oozing out of cracks in the
upholstery, and got the servo close enough to the panel
that Alex could reach it with one of the waldos. While
he punched in their access corn-code, she activated the
black box, plugged the servo into it, and put it on com
uplink mode with another waldo. She would have
shaken her head, if she could have. Not only was all of
this incredibly jury-rigged, it actually looked as if many
of the operations that should have been automatic had
deliberately been made manual

"I can't believe this stuff," she said, finally. "It must
have taken both hands and feet to fly this wreck!"

"It probably did," Alex observed. "A lot of the old
boys are like that. They don't trust AIs, and they'll tell
you long stories about how it's because someone who
was a friend of a friend had trouble with one and it
nearly killed him or wrecked his ship. The longer they
stay out here, the odder they get that way."

"And CenCom worries about us going loonie," she
replied, making a snorting sound. "Seems to me
there's a lot more to worry about with one of these old
rock-rats — "

"Except that there's never been a case of one of them
going around the bend in a way that endangered more
than a couple of people," Alex replied. Just about then,

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THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED

241

one of Tia's incoming lines activated. "There. Have I
got you live, lover?"

"Yes, and I'm downlinking now." The black box
burped its contents at her in a way that made her suspect
more than one gap in its memory-train. Oh well. Maybe
we'll get lucky. "Should we go check out the holds now?"

"Not the holds, the cabin/' Alex corrected. "The
holds will probably be half-full of primary-processed
metals, or salvage junk. He'll have put his loot from the
site in the cabins, if it was anything good."

"Good enough." She backed the servo out, carefully,
hoping to avoid tangling it in anything. Somehow she
actually succeeded; she wasn't quite sure how. She had
no real "feeling" from this servo; no sense of where its
limbs were, no feedback from the crawler treads. It
made her appreciate her shipbody all that much more.
With the kinesthetic input from her skin sensors and
the internals, she knew where everything was at all
times, exactly as if she had grown this body herself.

There were two cabins off the main one; the first was
clearly Hank's own sleeping quarters, and Tia was
amazed at how neat and clean they were. Somehow she
had expected a rat's nest But she recalled the pictures
of the control room as she turned the servo to the other
door, and realized that the control room had been just
as neat and dean —

It was only the myriad of jury-rigs and quick-fix
repairs that had given the impression of a mess. There
wasn't actually any garbage in there — the floor and
walls were squeaky-clean. Hank ran as clean a ship as
he could, given his circumstances.

The second door was locked; Alex didn't even bother
with any kind of finesse. Hank's ship would be
destroyed at this point, no matter what they did or
didn't do. One of the waldos was a small welding torch;
Alex used it to burn out the lock.

The door swung open on its own, when the lock was

no longer holding it. Tia suddenly knew how Lord
Carnavon felt, when he peeked through the hole
bored into the burial chamber ofTutankhamen.

" 'Wonderful things!'" she breathed, quoting him
balf-unconsciously.

Hank must have worked like a madman to get every-
thing into that cabin. This was treasure, in every sense of
the word. There was nothing in that cabin that did not
deam with precious metal or the sleekness of consum-
mate artistry. Or both. The largest piece was a statue
about a meter tall, of some kind of stylized winged crea-
ture. The smallest was probably one of the rings in the
heaps of jewelry piled into the carved stone boxes on the
floor — which were themselves works of high art If
Hank could claim even a fraction of this legally, he could
buy a new ship and still be a wealthy man.

If he lived to enjoy his wealth, that is.

He had stowed his loot very carefully, Tia saw, with the
same kind of neat, methodical care that showed in his
own cabin. Every box of jewelry was carefully strapped to
the floor; every vase was netted in place. Every statue was
lying on the bunk and held down by restraints. The cabin
had been crammed as full as possible and still permit the
door to open, but every single piece had been neady
stowed and then secured, so that no matter what the ship
did, none of it would break loose. And so that none of it
would damage anything else.

"Have we got enough pictures?" Alex asked faintly.
"I'm being overcome by gold-fever. I'd like to look for
those holos before my avarice gets the better of my
common sense, and I go running down there to dive
into that stuff myself."

"Right!" Tia said hastily, and backed the servo out
again. The door swung shut after it, and Alex heaved a
very real sigh of relief.

"Sorry, love," he said apologetically. "I never
thought I'd ever react like that."

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"You've never been confronted with several million
credits'-worth of gold alone," she replied soothingly. H\
don't even want to think what the real value of all of
that is. Do you think he'd keep the holos in his cabin?"

"There's no place to stash them out in the control
room," Alex pointed out

Once again, Hank's neat and methodical nature
saved the day for them, and Tia knew why he hadn't
bothered to tell them where he'd put his records. Once
they entered his cabin, there next to a small terminal
was a drawer marked "Records," and in the drawer
were the hardcopy claim papers he'd intended to file
and the holos he'd taken in a section marked "Possible
Claims."

"Luck's on our side today," Alex marveled. Tia
agreed. It would have been/ar more likely that they'd
have gotten some victim who'd refuse to divulge any-
thing, or one who'd been half-crazed — or one who
simply hadn't kept any kind of a record at all.

Luck was further on their side; he'd made
datahedron copies of everything, including the holos,
and those could be upUnked to AH-One-Oh-Three-
Three. There would be no need to bring anything out
of the quarantined dock area.

It took them several hours to find a way to bring up
the reader in the control cabin, then link the reader
into the com system, but once they got a good link
established, it was a matter of nanoseconds and the
precious recordings were theirs.

She guided the servo towards the lock and swiveled
the optic back for a last look — and realized thats&e still
had control over a number of the ship's functions via
the servo.

"Alex," she said slowly, "it would be a terrible thing if
the airlock dosed and locked, wouldn't it? That would
mean even if station ops blew the section to decon-
taminate it, they wouldn't be able to get into the ship —

or even get it undocked. They'd never know exactly
what was on board."

/jex blinked in bewilderment for a moment—then
slowly grinned. "That umdd be terrible, wouldn't it?"
he agreed. "Well, goodness, Tia, I imagine that they'd
probably dither around about it until somebody from
CenCom showed up — somebody with authority to
confiscate it and hold it for decontamination and
evaluation."

"Of course," she continued smoothly, sending a
databurst to the servo, programming it to get the air-
lock to shut and lock up. "And you know, these old
ships are so unreliable — what if something happened
to the ship's systems that made i( vent to vacuum? Why
then, even if the station managers decided to try and
short-circuit the lock, they couldn't get it open against a
hard vacuum. They'd have to bring in vacuum-
welders and cut the locks open — and that would
damage their own dock area. That would just be such
an inconvenience."

"It certainly would — " Alex said, stifling a laugh.

She sent further instructions to the ship and noted
with glee the ship proceeding to vent out the
spaceward side. The servo noted hard vacuum on one
of its sensors in a fairly reasonable length of time.

Satisfied that no one was going to be able to break
into Hank's ship and pilfer his treasure, she sent a last
set of instructions to the servo, shutting it down until
she sent it an activation key. No one was going to get
into that ship without her cooperation.

Hank would get a finder's fee, if nothing else, based
on the value of the artifacts he had found. But now it
would be based on the true value of what he had found,
and not just what was left after the owners of Presley
Station took their pick of the loot. Assuming they left
anything at all.

"Well," she said, when she had finished. "We'd better

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get to work. Areyou any good at deciphering black box
recordings?"

"Tolerably," Alex replied. "Tell you what; you
analyze the holos while I diddle the black box data,
then we'll switch."

"Provided you don't get gold-fever again," she
warned him, opening the data on his screens.

The holos showed exacdy what Hank had report*
a series of caves — caves that looked to have been arc
daily cut into the bluffs beside the ruined building
The nearest were completely dug up, and plair:
emptied, but beyond them, there was another series
caves that were open to the air and still held treasur
But this wasn't like anything Tia had ever seen befo
Each one of those caves, rather than being some ki
of grave or other archeological entity, was clearly noi,
ing more than a cache — and each one held precious
objects from an entirely different culture than the one
next to it The two nearest the camera in the first holo
held sacred objects from two cultures that were light-
years apart — and from ages when neither civilization
had attained even interplanetary flight, much less
starflight.

Furthermore, the more Tia studied the holos, the
more she came to the conclusion that the original
caches were old; never mind who was digging them up
now. The kind of weathering of the surfece and layer-
ing of detritus she saw in the holos took hundreds,
perhaps thousands of years to build up. And the build-
ings in one of the other holos were very old.

Nor did she recognize who could have constructed
them.

So who could have been responsible for collecting all
these treasures in the first place? Why had they buried
them? Where did they get it all — and above all, why
didn't they come back after it?

There was some evidence around the caves that the

current looters had attempted to rebury their finds.
But had diey done so in an attempt to hide it again —
or had they done it to try and kill the disease? How
many of the looters were exposed? From the number
of caves that had been broken into, it looked as if there
had been quite a few people at work there....

Tia wished she could sit back and chew a nail or
something. All she had now were questions and no
answers. And the lives of other people might hang in
the balance.

There was only one way to answer all those ques-
tions. They were going to have to find Hank's mystery
planet and find out for themselves.

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247

• CHAPTER EIGHT

Tia didn't entirely trust the integrity of the Prestey Sta-
tion comcenter. She certamly expected that whatever she
sent out would be monitored by the owners and their
underlings. Unfortunately, there had been no provision
for the need for secrecy in this mission; she had no codes
and no scramblers. There had been no real reason to think
that they would ever need such secrecy, so she was forced
to send in the dear. Just to be on die safe side, she uplinked
on her own and double-sent everything, but she knew that
whatever she sent off that way would be subject to delays as
it bounced from remote hyperwave relay-station to relay-
station, takingthelong way "home."

As she had expected, the owners of the station were
quick to move on the information that Hank's ship
contained treasure, despite the feet that no one should
have read her messages back to Kenny and the rest
She was just grateful that the owners' first thought was
to grab what they could from the nearby trove, and not
to try and figure out where Hank came from — or
attempt to force him to tell them.

The first intimation that the communications had
been leaked was when the station ops tried to claim the
ship and all its contents for themselves; filing confisca-
tion papers in the Central Systems Courts. When they
discovered that Tia had already tied the ship and its
contents up legally on Hank's behalf, they moved on
the principle that "possession is nine-tenths of the law,
and the fellow arguing the other tenth has to prove it
with a lawyer."

They sent crews into the docks, to try and get into the

ip to strip it of as much as they could. Tia's cleverness
thwarted them, as they worked their way — slowly —
through every step she'd expected.

She figured that by the time they were in a position
to actually threaten Hank's possessions, the CS
authorities would be on the scene in person.
Meanwhile, she and Alex had some figuring to do —
vjhere was Hank's cache-world? Same problem as
before, except that this time the possible search area
was smaller, and cone-shaped rather than spherical.

Unfortunately, there were some other people who
wanted to get their hands on that same information.

And unknown to either of them, those people had
decided that Alex and Tia were already privy to it.

Tia kept a careful eye on the activity around her slip
just on general principles, even when she wasn't feel-
ing nervous — but given their current circumstances,
and the fact that they were the only Central Systems
ship out here at the moment, she couldn't help but feel
a bit, well, paranoid. At the moment, only three people
knew for certain that she was a brainship; Hank, the
traffic control officer who brought them in, and that
doctor. She was pretty certain that the doctor hadn't
mentioned it to his superiors; she knew Hank hadn't
told anyone, and as jittery as the other man had been,
he'd probably forgotten it.

No one addressed her when they called, at any rate,
and she took pains to make callers think that she was an
Al. So far, they seemed to be falling in with the deception.
This wasn't a bad state of affairs; no one expected an AI to
recognize dangers the way a real sentient could. She
could tap into the optical scanners in the dock area
around the ship and no one would have any notion that
she was keeping watch. She made sure to schedule her
three or four hours of DeepSleep while Alex was awake;

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normally taking them during his "morning," while he
was still rather grumpy and uncommunicative and she'd
rather not talk to him anyway. And she scanned the
recordings she made while she was under, just to be suit
she didn't miss anything.

That was why, a few days after their interview with
Hank, she noticed the man in the dock-crew uniform
coverall who seemed to be working double shifts.
Except that no one else was working double shifts...
and what was more, there was currently a company
prohibition against overtime as a cost-cutting measure.

Something wasn't right, and he never left the imme-
diate area of her slip. What was he doing there? It
wasn't as if she was either a freighter with goods to load
or unload, or a passenger liner. She didn't need servic-
ing either. He never got dose enough that she could
see exactly what he was up to — but it seemed to her
that he was doing an awful lot of make-work....

She kept a dose eye on him as he wandered around
the dock area—purposefully, but accomplishing noth-
ing that she could see. Gradually though, he worked
his way in doser and closer to her slip, and litde mental
alarms began going off as she watched him and the way
he kept glancing at her lock out of the corner of his eye.

Around sixteen-hundred she watched him remov-
ing control-panel plates and deaning in behind them,
work too delicate to trust to a servo.

Except that he'd just cleaned that same area two
hours ago.

That was senseless; regs stated that the panels only
had to be cleaned once every two weeks, not every two
hours.

Furthermore, there was something not quite right
with his uniform. It wasn't exactly the same color of
gray as everyone else's; it looked crisply new, and the
patches were just a little too bright There were plenty
of dockworkers' uniforms in Presley storage, there was

no reason for someone to have had a new one made up
unless he was an odd size. And this man was as average
as anyone could possibly be. He was so very unremark-
able that she noticed his uniform long before she
noticed him.

That was bad enough — but just as seventeen-
hundred passed and everyone else in the dock-crew
went on supper break, another man in that too-new
uniform showed up, while the first man kept on put-
tering about.

"Alex?" she said, unhappily. "There's something
going on out there I don't like."

He looked up from his perusal of Hank's holos; he
had prints made from them spread out all over the
floor and was sitting on his heels beside them. "What's

up?"

She filled him in quickly, as a third and a fourth per-
son in that same uniform ambled into the dock.

There were now four crewman in the docks during
break. All four of them in a dock area where there were
no ships loading or unloading and no new ships
expected to dock in the next twenty-four hours.

"Tia, I don't like this either," he said, much to her
relief, standing up and heading for the main console.
"I want you to get the station manager online and see
what—"

Abruptly, as if someone had given the four men a
signal, they dropped everything they were pretending
to do and headed for her docking slip.

Tia made a split-second dedsion, for within a few
seconds they were going to be in her airlock.

She slammed her airlock shut, but one of the men
now running for her lock had some kind of black box
in his hands; she couldn't trust that he might not be
able to override her own lock controls. "Alex!" she
cried, as she frantically hot-keyed her engines from
cold-start. "They're going to board!"

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As Alex flung himself at his acceleration couch, she
sent off a databurst to the station manager and hit the
emergency override on her side of the dock.

The dockside airlock doors slammed shut, literally in
the faces of the four men approaching. Another
databurst to the docking-slip controls gave her an
emergency uncouple — there weren't too many pilots
who knew about that kind of override, still in place
from the bad old days when captains had to worry
about pirates and station-raiders. She gave her insys-
tem attitude thrusters a kick and shoved free of the
dock altogether, frantically switching to external optics
and looking for a clear path out to deep space.

As her adrenaline-level kicked up, her reactions
went into overdrive, and what had been real-time
became slow motion. Alex sailed ungracefully through
the air, lurching for his chair; to her, the high-speed
chatter of comlinks between AIs slowed to a drawl. Cal-
culations were going on in her subsystems that she was
only minimally aware of; a kind of background mur-
mur as she switched from camera to camera, looking for
the trouble she knew must be out there.

"The chair Alex — " she got out —just in time to spot
a bee-craft, the kind made for outside construction
work on the station, heading straight for her. Behind it
were two men in self-propelled welder-suits. Someone
had stolen or requisitioned station equipment, and
they were going to get inside her no matter what the
consequences were.

Accidents in space were so easy to arrange....

Alex wasn't strapped down yet She couldn't wait

She spun around as Alex leapt for his couch, throw-
ing him off-balance, and blasted herself out of
station-space with a fine disregard for right of way and
inertia as he grabbed and caught the arm of the chair.

Alex slammed face-first into the couch, yelped in
pain at the impact, and dung with both hands.

another small craft heading for her with
the purposeful acceleration of someone who intended
to ram. She poured on the speed, all alarms and SOS
si<mals blaring, while Alex squirmed around and fas-
tened himself in, moaning. His nose dripped blood
clown the side of his face, and his lip poured scarlet
where he'd bitten or cut it.

She dove under thebowofa tug, delaying herpursuer.

Who was in on this? Was this something the High
Families were behind?

Surely not—

please, not—

She continued to accelerate, throwing off distress
signals even onto the relays, dumping real-time
replays into message bursts every few seconds.
Another tug loomed up in front of her; she sideslipped
at the last moment, skimming by the Al-driven ship so
close that it shot attitude thrusters out in all directions,
the AI driven into confusion by her wild flying.

The ship behind was still coming on; no longer gain-
ing, but not losing any ground either.

But with all the fuss that Tia was putting up, even
Presley Station couldn't ignore the feet that someone
was trying to jack her. Especially not with Central Sys-
tems investigators due any day, and with the way she
was dumping her records onto the relays. If "they"
were allied with the station, "they" wouldn't be able to
catch everything and wipe it. If AH One-Oh-Three-
Three disappeared, she was making it very hard for
the claim of "accident" to hold any water—

I hope.

As Tia continued to head for deep space, a patrol
craft finally put in an appearance, cutting in between
her and her pursuer, who belatedly turned to make a
run for it

Tia slowed, and stopped, and held her position, as
the adrenaline in her blood slacked off

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/ remember panting, I remember shivering. Fd do both nek
now, if I could. As it was, errant impulses danced along
her sensors, ghost-feelings of the might-have-been of
weapons' fire, tractor beams....

Slow heart. It's all right. Gradually her perception
slowed back down to real-time, and the outside world
"sped up." That was when the station manager himself
hailed her.

"Of course I'm sure they were trying to break in," she
snapped in reply to his query, re-sending him her
recordings, with close-ups on suspicious bulges under
the coveralls that were the right size and placement for
needlers and other weapons. She followed that with
the bee-craft and the two men in the welding-suits _
headed straight for her. "And those pursuit-craft cer-
tainly were not my imagination!" She raised her voice,
both in volume and pitch. "I happen to be a fully
trained graduate of Lab Schools, you know! I'm not in
the habit of imagining things!"

Now her adrenaline kicked in again, but this time
from anger. They'd been in real danger — they could
have been killed! And this idiot was talking to her as if
she was some kind of— of joy-riding tweenie!

"I never said they were, ma'am," the station
manager replied, taken somewhat aback. "I — "

*Just what kind of station are you running where a
CS craft can be subject to this kind of security breach?"
she continued wrathnilly, running right over the top of
him, now that she had the upper hand and some ver-
bal momentum. "I'm reporting this to the Central
Worlds Sector Coordinator on my own comlinkT

"You don't need to do that ma— "

"Andfurthermore, I am standing off-station until you
can give me a high-security slip!" she continued, really
getting warmed up and ready to demand all the con-
siderations due a PTA. "My poor brawn is black and
blue from head to toe from die knocking around he

rook andluckyitwasn'tworsellwantyoutocoteftthese

people — "

"We're taking care of that, ma—"

"And I want to know everything you learn from them
hgfore I dock again!" she finished, with a blast of feed-
back that punctuated her words and made him swear
under his breath as the squeal pierced his ears. "Until
then, I ani going tosz/ out here and clog your approach
lanes, and I don't particularly care whether or not you
like it!"

And with that, she put him on "record" and let him
splutter into a datahedron while she turned her atten-
tion to Alex.

He had a wad of tissues at his face, trying to staunch
the blood from nose and lip, and his eyes above the tis-
sues were starting to puff and turn dark. He was going
to look like a raccoon before too long, with a double set
of black eyes.

Obviously the first thing that had impacted with the
couch was his face.

"Alex?" she said timidly. "Oh, Alex, I'm so sorry — I
didn't mean — there wasn't time — "

"Ith awright," he replied thickly. "You di okay. Din
hab mush shoice. Hanneled ev'thing great, hanneled
him great. You arn gon moof for wile?"

She correctly interpreted that as praise for her han-
dling of the situation and a query as to whether or not
she planned on moving.

"No, I don't plan on it," she replied, dryly. "But I
hadritplanned on any of this in the first place."

He simply grunted, pried himself up painfiilly out of
the acceleration couch and headed for their tiny sick-
bay to patch himself up.

She sent in a servo, discreetly, to dean up the blood
in the sickbay and a second to take care of the mess in
the main cabin, thanking her lucky stars that it hadn't
been worse. If Alex had been standing when she pulled

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that spin and acceleration instead of heading in the
direction of the couch —

She didn't want to think about it. Instead, she or-
dered the kitchen to make iced gel-packs. Lots of them.
And something soft for dinner.

They left as soon as the CS contingent arrived and
spent a little time debriefing them. The CS folk showed
up in a much fuller force than even Tia had expected.
Not only Central Systems Medical and Administrative
personnel — but a CenSec Military brainship, the CP-
One-Oh-Four-One. Bristling with weaponry —

And with the latest and greatest version of the Singularity
Drive, no doubt, she thought, a litde bitterly. Heaven only
knows what their version can do. Bring its own Singularity
point with it, maybe.

Whatever the administrators of Presley Station had
thought they were going to get away with, they were
soon dissuaded. The first person off the CenSec ship
was a Sector Vice-Admiral; right behind him was an
armed escort. He proclaimed the station to be under
martial law, marched straight into the station
manager's office, and within moments had the entire
station swiftly and efficiently secured.

Tia had never been so happy to see anyone in her
life. Within the hour all the witnesses and guilty parties
had been taken into military custody, and Tia confi-
dently expected someone to call them and take their
depositions at any time.

Alex still looked like someone had been interrogat-
ing him with rubber hoses, so when the brainship
hailed them, she took the call, and let him continue
nursing his aching head and bruises.

The ship-number was awfully close to hers, al-
though the military might not use standard CS
brainship nomenclature. Still... - One-Oh-Four-One.
That's close enough for the brain to have been in my class—

, that is you, isn't it?" were the first words over
the comlink. The "voice"—along with the sharp over-
tones and aggressive punch behind them — was very
familiar.

"Pol?" she replied, wondering wildly what the odds
were on this litde meeting.

"In the shell and ready to kick some tail!" Pol
responded cheerfully. "How the heck are you? Heard
you had some trouble out here, and the Higher Ups
said 'go,1 so we came a-running."

"Trouble—you could say so." She sent him over her
records of the short — but hair-raising, at least by her
standards — flight, in a quick burst. He scanned them
just as quickly, and sent a wordless blip of color and
sound conveying mingled admiration and surprise. If
he had been a softie, he would have whistled.

"Not bad flying, if I do say so myself!" he said. "Like
the way you cut right under that tug — maybe you
should have opted for CenSec or Military."

"I don't think so," she replied. "That was more than
enough excitement for the next decade for me."

"Suit yourself." Pol laughed, as if he didn't believe
her. "My brawn wants to talk to your brawn. It's
debriefing time."

She called Alex, who had been flat on his back in his
bunk with an ice-gel pack on his black eyes. He staggered
out to his chair and plopped down into it For once, she
thought, no one was going to notice his rumpled
uniform — not with the black-blue-purple and green
glory of his bruised face staring out of a screen.

"Line's open," she told Pol, activating the visual circuit.

As she had half-expected, given her impressions of
the candidates when she had been picking a brawn, it
was Chria Chance who stared out of the screen, with
surprise written all over her handsome features. She
was still wearing her leather uniforms, Tia noticed —
which argued powerfully for "Chria" being High

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Family. Little eccentricities like custom-tailored
uniforms could be overlooked in someone who was
both a High Family scion and had an excellent record
of performance. Tia had no doubt that Chria's record
was outstanding.

Tia noted also one difference between the Courier
Service ships and the CenSec Couriers besides the
armament. Directly behind Chria was another console
and another comchair; this one held a thin, sharp-
featured man in a uniform identical to Chria's, with an
ornamental leather band or choker circling his long
throat. He looked just as barbaric as she did. More,
actually. He had the rangy, take-no-prisoners look of
someone from one of the outer systems.

In short, he and Chria probably got along as if they
had been made for each other.

"Frigging novas!" Chria exclaimed, after the first few
seconds of staring. "Alex, what in blazes happened to
you"? Your dispatches never said anything about — did
they — "

"Nobody worked me over, Brunhilde," Alex said
tiredly, but with a hint of his customary humor. "So
don't get your tights in a knot This is all my own fault

— or maybe just the fault of bad timing. It's the result
of my face hitting my chair at—what was that accelera-
tion, Tia?"

"About two gees," she said apologetically.

Chria shook her head in disbelief. "Huh. Well, shoot

— here I was getting all ready to go on-station and dent
some heads to teach these perps some manners." She
sat back in her chair and grinned at him. "Sorry about
that, flyboy. Next time, strap in."

"Next time, maybe I'll have some warning," he
replied. "Those downs tried to 'jack us with no advance
notice. New regs should require at least twenty-four
hours warning before a hijacking. And forms filed in
quad."

Chria laughed. "Right. You two have been making
my people very happy, did you know that? Their nick-
name for you is 'Bird-dog,' because you've been
flushing so much game out for us."

"No doubt." Alex copied her stance, except that
where she steepled her hands in front of her chin, he
rubbed his temple." Do I assume that this is not a social
call? As in, 'debriefing time'?"

"Oh, yes and no." She shrugged, but her eyes
gleamed. "We don't really need to debrief you, but
there's a couple of orders I have to pass. First of all, I've
been ordered to tell you that if you've figured out
where your rock-rat's treasure trove is, transmit the
coordinates to us so we know where you're going, but
get on out there as soon as you can move your tail.
We'll send a follow-up, but right now we've got some
high-level butts to bust here."

"Generous of you," Alex said dryly. "Letting us go in
first and catch whatever flack is waiting. Are we still a
laird-dog,' or have we been elevated to 'self-propelled
trouble magnet'?"

Chria only laughed.

"Come on, flyboy, get with the team. There's still a
Plague-spot out there, and you're the ones most likely
to find it; we don't know what in Tbphet we're looking
for." She raised an eyebrow at him, and he nodded in
grudging agreement. "Then when you find it, you
know how to handle it. I kind of gather that your
people want the plague stopped, but they also want
their statues and what-all kept safe, too. What're Neil
and I going to do, shoot the bug down? He's hot on the
trigger, but he's not up to potting microbesjust yet!"

Behind her, the sharp-faced man shrugged in self-
deprecation and grinned.

"So, if you've got a probable, let us know so we can
keep an eye on you. Otherwise — " she spread her
hands " — there's nothing we need you for. Fly free,

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Anne McCaffrey &f Mercedes Lackey

tittle birds — the records you so thoughtfully bounced
all over the sector are all we need to convict these
perps, wrap them up, and stick them where they have
to pump in daylight"

"Here's what we have," Tia said before Alex could
respond. She sent Pol duplicates of their best guesses.
"As you can see, we have narrowed it down to three
really good prospects. Only one of those has a record of
sentient ruins, so that's the one we think is the most
likely — I wish they'd logged something besides just
'presence of structures,' but there it is."

"Survey," Pol said succinctly. "Get lots of burnout
cases in Survey. Well, what can you expect, going
planet-hopping for months on end, dropping satel-
lites, with nothing but an AI to keep you company?
Sometimes surprised they don't go buggy, all things
considered. I would."

Pol seemed much more convivial than Tia recalled
him ever being, and completely happy with fas brawn,
and Chria had that relaxed look of a brawn with the
perfect partner. But still—Chria had been an odd one,
and Military and Central Security didn't let their brain-
ships swap brawns without overwhelming reasons. Was
Pol happy?

"Pol," Tia sent only to him, "didyou get a good one?"

Pol laughed, replying the same way. "The best! I
wouldn't trade off Chria or Neilfor any combo in the Service.
We three-up over here, you know — fl's a double-brawn and
brain setup; it's a fail-safe because we're armed. Chria's the
senior officer, and Neil's the gunnery-mate, but Neil's been
studying, and now he can double her on anything, fully
qualified. That's not usually the case, from what I hear."

"Why didn't he get his own bramship, then ?" she asked,
puzzled. "If he's fully qualified, shouldn't he get a promo-
tion?"

"Who configure softies?" Pol said dismissively. "He and
Chria share fwaibin. Maybe ti'shormonai. How about you—

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259

you were saying you planned to be pretty picky about your
frowns. Did they rush you, or did you get a good one?"

There were a hundred things she could have said —
many of which could have gotten her in a world of
trouble if she answered as enthusiastically as she would
have liked. "Oh, Alex will do — when he's not shoving his
face into chairst" she replied as lighdy as she could. Pol
laughed and made a few softie jokes while Alex and
Chria tied up all the loose ends that needed to be dealt
with.

They were the only ship permitted to leave Presley
space — Chria hadn't been joking when she'd said that
there was going to be a thorough examination of
everything going on out here. On the other hand, not
having to contend with other traffic was rather nice, all
things considered.

Now if only they had a Singularity Drive....

Nevermind, she told herself, as she accelerated to
hyper, lean manage without it. I just hope we don't have any
more "help"from the opposition.

This place didn't even have a name yet —just a chart
designation. Epsilon Delta 177.3.3. Pol had called it
right on the nose — whoever had charted this place
must have been a burnout case, or he would have at
least tried to name it. That was one of the few perks of a
Survey mission; most people took advantage of it

It certainly had all die earmarks of the kind of place
they were looking for; eccentric tilt, heavy cloud cover
that spoke of rain or snow or both. But as Tia
decelerated into the inner system, she suddenly knew
that they had hit paydirt without ever coming close
enough to do a surface scan.

There should have been a Survey satellite in orbit
around their hot little prospect This was a Terra-type
planet; even with an eccentric tilt, eventually someone
was going to want to claim it. The satellite should have

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261

been up there collecting data on planet three, on the
entire system, and on random comings and goings
within the system, if any. It should have been broad-
casting warnings to incoming ships about the system's
status — charted but unexplored, under bio-quaran-
tine until checked out, possibly dangerous, native
sentients unknown, landing prohibited.

The satellite was either missing or silent.

"Accidents do happen," Alex said cautiously, as Tia
came in closer, decelerating steadily, and prepared to
make orbit. "Sometimes those babies break."

She made a sound of disbelief. "Not often. And what
are the odds? It should at least be giving us the naviga-
tional bleep, and there's nothing, nothing at all." She
scanned for the satellite as she picked her orbital path,
hoping to pick something up.

"Oh, Tia — look at that rotation, that orbit! It could
have gotten knocked out of the sky by something — "
he began.

"Could have, but wasn't. I've got it, Alex," she said
with glee. "I found it! And it's deader than a burned-
out glow-tube."

She matched orbits with the errant satellite, coming
alongside for a closer look. It was about half her size, so
there was no question of bringing it inside, but as she
circled it like a curious fish, there was one thing quite
obvious.

Nothing was externally wrong with it.

"No sign of collision, and it wasn't shot at," Alex
observed, and sighed. "No signs of a fire or explosion
inside, either. You've tried reactivating it, I suppose?"

"It's not answering," she said firmly. "Guess what?
You get to take a walk."

He muttered something under his breath and went
after his pressure-suit. After the past few days in transi-
tion, his face had begun to heal, turning from black,
blue and purple to a kind of dirty green and yellow.

She presumed that the rest of him was in about the
same shape — but he was obviously feeling rather
sorry for himself.

Do I snap at him, or do I kind of tease him along? she
wondered. He hadn't been in a particularly good mood
since the call from Chria. Was it that he was still in pain?
Or was it something else entirely? There were so many
signals of softperson body language that she'd never
had a chance to learn, but there had been something
going on during that interview — not precisely be-
tween Alex and Chria, though. More like, going on
with Alex, because of Chria.

Before she had a chance to make up her mind, he
was at the airlock, suited up and tethered, and waiting
for her to dose the inner lock for him.

She berated herself for wool-gathering and cycled
the lock, keeping an anxious eye on him while she
scanned the rest of the area for unexpected — and
probably unwelcome — visitors.

It would be just our luck for the looters to show up right
about now.

He jetted over to the access-hatch of the satellite and
popped it without difficulty.

Wait a moment—shouldn't he have had to unlock it ?

"Tia, the access hatch was jimmied," he said, his
breath rasping in the suit-mike as he worked, heaving
the massive door over and locking it down. "You were
right, green all the way. The satellite's been sabotaged.
Pretty crude work; they just disconnected the solar-
cells from the instrument pack. It'll still make orbital
corrections, but that's all. Don't know why they didn't
just knock it out of the sky, unless they figured Survey
has some kind of telltale on it, and they'd show up if it
went down."

"What should we do?" she asked, uncertainly. "I
know you can repair it, but should you? We need some
°f the information it can give us, but if you repair it,

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263

wouldn't they figure that Survey had been through?
Or would they just not notice?"

"I don't want to reconnect the warn-off until we're
ready to leave, or they'll definitely know someone's
been eating their porridge,** he replied slowly, as he
floated half-in, half-out of the hatch. "If the satellite's
telling them to take a hike as soon as they enter orbit,
there won't be much doubt that someone from the
authorities has been here. But you're right, and I not
only want to know if someone shows up in orbit while
we're down on the ground, I want the near-space scans
it took before they shut it down, and I want it to keep
scanning and recording. The question is, am I smart
enough to make it do all that?"

"I want the planetary records," she told him. "With
luck, the ruins may show up on the scans. We might
even see signs of activity where the looters have been
digging. As for, are you smart enough — if you can get
the solar arrays reconnected, I can reprogram every
function it has. I'm CS, remember? We do work for
Survey sometimes, so I have the access codes for Sur-
vey satellites. Trust me, they're going to work; Survey
never seems to think someone might actually want to
sabotage one of their satellites, so they never change
the codes."

"Good point" He writhed for a moment, upside-
down, the huge blue-white globe behind him making
an impressive backdrop. "Okay, give me a minute or
two to splice some cable." Silence for a moment, except
for grunts and fast breathing. "Good; it wasn't as awful
as I thought There. Solar array plugged back in. Ah, I
have the link to the memory established. And — yes,
everything is powering up, or at least that's what it
looks like in here."

She triggered memory-dump, and everything came
over in compressed mode, loud and clear. All the near-
space scans and all the geophysical records that had

been made before the satellite was disabled. Surface-
scans in all weathers, made on many passes across the
(ace of the planet

But then — nothing. Whoever had disabled the
satellite had known what he was doing — the memory
that should have contained records of visitors was
empty. She tried a number of ways of accessing it, only
to conclude that the data storage device had been com-
pletely reformatted, nonsense had been written over
all the memory, and it had been reformatted again. Not
even an expen would have been able to get anything
out of it now.

"Can you hook in the proximity-alert with our corn-
system?" she asked.

"I think so." He braced himself against the hatch and
shoved himself a little farther inside. "Yes, it's all
modular. I can leave Just that up and powered, and if
they aren't listening on this band, they won't know that
there's been anyone up here diddling with it."

A few moments more, and she caught a live signal on
one of the high-range insystem comlinks, showing a
nearby presence in the same orbit as the satellite. She
felt her heart jump and started to panic —

— then she scolded herself for being so jumpy. It
was the satellite, registering her presence, of course.

Alex closed the hatch and wedged it shut as it had
been before, reeling himself back in on the tether. A
moment later, her lock cycled, and he came back into
the main cabin, pulling offhis helmet and peeling off
his suit

Tia spent some time reprogramming the satellite,
killing the warn-off broadcast, turning all the near-
space scanners on and recording. Then she turned her
attention to the recordings it had already made.

"So, what have we got?" he asked, wriggling to get
the suit down over his hips. "Had any luck?"

"There's quite a few of those ruins," she said

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265

carefully, noting with a bit of jealousy that the survey
satellite array was actually capable of producing shar-
per and more detailed images than her own. Then
again, what it produced was rather limited.

"Well, that's actually kind of promising." He slid out
of the suit and into the chair, leaving the pressure-suit
in a crumpled heap on the floor. She waited a moment
until he was engrossed in the screen, then discretely
sent a servo to pick it and the abandoned helmet up.

"I'd say here or here," he said at last, pointing out
two of the ruins in or near one of the mountain ranges.
"That would give us the rain-snow pattern the first vic-
tim raved about Look, even in the same day you'd get
snow in the morning, rain in the afternoon, and snow
after dark during some seasons."

She highlighted those — but spotted three more
possibilities, all three in areas where the tilt would have
had the same effect on the climate. She marked them as
well, and was rewarded by his nod of agreement.

"All right. This has to be the planet. There's no
reason for anyone to have disabled the satellite other-
wise. Even if Survey or the Institute were sending
someone here for a more detailed look, they'd simply
have changed the warn-off message; they wouldn't
have taken the satellite off-line." He took a deep breath
and some of the tension went out of his shoulders.
"Now it's just going to be finding the right place."

This was work the computers could do while Tia
slept, comparing their marked areas and looking for
changes that were not due to the seasons or the
presence or absence of snow. Highest on the priority
list was to look for changes that indicated disturbance
while there was snow on the ground. Digging and
tramping about in the snow would darken it, no matter
how carefully the looters tried to hide the signs of their
presence. That was a sign that only the work of sentients

or herd-beasts would produce, and herd-beasts were
pot likely to search ruins for food.

Within the hour, they had their site — there was no
doubt whatsoever that it was being visited and dis-
turbed regularly. Some of the buildings had even been
meddled with.

"Now why would they do that?" Tia wondered out
loud, as she increased the magnification to show that one
of the larger buildings had mysteriously grown a
repaired roof. "They can't need that much space — and
how did they fix the roof within twenty-four hours?"

"They didn't," Alex said flatly. "That's plastic
stretched over the hole. As to why — the hole is just
about big enough to let a twenty-man ship land inside.
Hangar and hiding place all in one."

They changed their position to put them in
geosynchronous orbit over their prize — and detailed
scans of the spot seemed to indicate that no one had
visited it very recently. The snow was still pristine and
white, and the building she had noted had a major por-
tion of its roof missing again.

"That's it," Alex said with finality.

Tia groaned. "We know — and we can't prove it. We
know for a fact that someone is meddling with the site,
but we can't prove the site is the one with the plague.
Not without going down."

"Oh, come on, Tia, where's your sense of adven-
ture?" Alex asked, feebly. "We knew we were probably
going to have to go down on the surface. All we have to
do is go down and get some holos of the area just like
the ones Hank took. Then we have our proof."

"My sense of adventure got left back when I was
nearly hijacked," she replied firmly. "I can do without
adventure, thank you."

And she couldn't help herself; she kept figuratively
glancing over her shoulder, watching for a ship —

Would it be armed? She couldn't help but think of

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Pol, bristling with weaponry, and picturing those
weapons aimed at her.

Unarmed. Unarmored. Not even particularly fast.

On the other hand, she was a brainskip, wasn't she?
The product of extensive training. Surely if she
couldn't outrun or outshoot these people, she could
out-think them —

Surely.

Well, if she was going to out-think them, the first
thing she should do would be to find a way to keep
them from spotting her. So it was time to use those
enhanced systems on the satellite to their advantage.

"What are you doing?" Alex asked, when she
remained silent for several minutes, sending the
' manual-override signal to the satellite so that she could
use the scanners.

"I'm looking for a place to hide," she told him. "Two
can play that game. And I'm smaller than their ship; I
shouldn't need a building to hide me. I'll warn you,
though, I may have to park a fair hike away from the
cache sites."

It took a while; several hours of intense searching,
while Alex did what he could to get himself prepared
for the trip below. That amounted mostly to readying
his pressure-suit for a long stay; stocking it with con-
densed food and water, making certain the suit
systems were up to a week-long tour, if it came to that
Recharging the power-cells, triple-checking the seals
— putting tape on places that tended to rub and a bit
of padding on places that didn't quite fit — every-
thing that could be done to his suit, Alex was doing.
They both knew that from the time he left her airlock
to the time he returned and she could purge him and
the lock with hard vacuum, he was going to have to
stay in it

Finally, in mid-afternoon by the "local" time at the
site below them, she found what she was looking for.

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267

"I found my hiding place," she said into the silence,
startling him into jumping. "Are you ready?"

"As ready as I'll ever be," he said, a little too jauntily.
Was it her imagination, or did he turn a little pale?
Well, if she had been capable of it, she'd have done the
same. As it was, she was so jittery that she finally had to
alter her blood-chemistry a little to deal with it.

"Then strap down," she told him soberly. "We're
heading right into a major weather system and there's
no getting around it This is going to be tricky, and the
ride is likely to be pretty rough."

Alex took the time to strap down more than himself;
he made a circuit of the interior, ensuring that any-
thing loose had been properly stowed before he took
his place in the comchair. Only then, when he was
double-strapped in, did Tia make the burn that began
their descent

Their entry was fairly smooth until they were on
final approach and hit thick atmosphere and the
weather that rode the mid-levels. The wild storm winds
of a blizzard buffeted her with heavy blows; gusts that
came out of nowhere and flung her up, down, in any
direction but the one she wanted. She fought her way
through them with grim determination, wondering
how on earth the looters had gotten this far. Surely
with winds like this, the controls would be torn right
out of the grip of a softperson's hands!

Of course, they could be coming down under the
control of an AI. Once the course had been
programmed in, the AI would hold to it. And within
limits, it would deal with unexpected conditions all the
way to the surface.

Within limits: that was the catch. Throw it too for off
the programmed course, and it wouldn't know what to
do.

Never mind, she told hersel£ You need to get down there
yourself!

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A litde lower, and it wasn't just wind she was dealing
with, it was snow. A howling blizzard, to be precise —
one that chilled her skin and caked snow on every sur-
face, throwing off her balance by tiny increments,
forcing her to recalculate her descent all the way to the
ground. A strange irony — she who had never seen
weather as a child was now having to deal with weather
at its wildest...

Then suddenly, as she approached the valley she
had chosen, the wind died to a mere zephyr. Snow
drifted down in picture perfect curtains — totally
obscuring visuals, of course, but that was why she was
on instruments anyway. She killed forward thrusters
and went into null-grav; terribly draining of power, but
the only way she could have the control she needed at
this point. She inched her way into her chosen valley,
using the utmost of care. The spot where she wanted to
set down was just big enough to hold her — and right
above it, if the readings she'd gotten from above were
holding true, there was a big buildup of snow. Just
enough to avalanche down and cover her, if she was
very careful not to set it off prematurely.

She eased her way into place with the walls of the valley
less than a hand-span away from her skin; a brief look at
Alex showed him clenching teeth and holding armrests
with hands that were white-knuckled. He could read the
instruments as well as she could. Well, she'd never set
down into a place that was quite this narrow before. And
certainly she had never set down under conditions that
might change in the next moment...

If that blizzard behind them came howling up this
valley, it could catch her and send her right into the val-
ley wall.

There. She tucked herself into the bottom of the val-
ley and felt her "feet" sink through the snow to the rock
beneath. Nice, solid rock. Snow-covered rocks on
either side.

And above — the snowcrest Waiting.
Here goes —

She activated an external speaker and blasted the
landscape with shatter-rock, bass turned to max,
And die world fell in.

"Are you going to be able to blast free of this?" Alex
asked for the tenth time, as another servo came in from
the airlock to recharge.

"It's not that bad," she said confidently. She wasmMcfc
happier with four meters of snow between her and the
naked sky. Avalanches happened all the time; there was
nothing about this valley to signal to the looters that
they'd been discovered, and that a ship was hiding
here. Not only that, but the looters could prance
around on top of her and never guess she was there
unless they found the tunnel her servos were cutting to
the surface. And she didn't think any of them would
have the temerity to crawl down what might be the den-
tunnel of a large predator.

"If it's not that bad," Alex said fretfully, "then why is
it taking forever to melt a tunnel up and out?"

"Because no one ever intended these little servos to
have to do something like that," she replied, as
patiently as she could. "They're welders, not snow
clearers. And they have to reinforce the tunnel with
plastic shoring-posts so it doesn't fall in and trap you."
He shook his head; she gave up trying to explain it.
"They're almost through, anyway," she told him. "It's
about time to get into your suit."

That would keep him occupied.

"This thing is getting depressingly familiar," he com-
plained. "I see more of the inside of this suit than I do
my cabin."

"No one promised you first-class accommodations
on this ride," she teased, trying to keep from showing
her own nervousness. "I'll tell you what; how about if I

270

ArmeMcCaffny & Mercedes Lackey

have one of the servos make a nice set of curtains for
your helmet?"

"Thanks. I think." He made a face at her. "Well, I'll tell
you this much; if I have to keep spending this much time
in the blasted thing, I'm going to have some comforts
built into it—or demand they get meabetter model." He
twisted and turned, making sure he still had full mobility.
"The sanitary facilities leave a lot to be desired."

"I'll report your complaints to the ship's steward,"
she told him. "Meanwhile—we have breakout"

"Sounds like my cue." Alex sighed. "I hope this isn't
going to be as cold as it looks."

Alex crawled up the long, slanting tunnel to the sur-
face, lighting his way with the work-lamp on the front
of his helmet. Not that there was much to see —just a
white, shiny tunnel that seemed to go on forever,
reaching into die cold darkness... as if, with no warn-
ing, he would find himself entombed in ice forever.
The plastic reinforcements were as white as the snow;
invisible unless you were looking for them. Which was
the point, he supposed. But he was glad they were
there. Without them, tons of snow and ice could come
crashing down on him at any moment...

Stop that, he told himself sharply. Now is not the time to
get claustrophobia.

Still, there didn't seem to be any end to the tunnel —
and he was cold, chilled right down to the soul. Not
physically cold, or so his readouts claimed. Just chilled
by the emptiness, the sterility. The loneliness...

You're doing it again. Stop it.

Was the surrounding snow getting lighter? He
turned off his helmet light — and it was true, there was
a kind of cool, blue light filtering down through the ice
and snow! And up ahead — yes, there was the mouth
of the tunnel, as promised, a round, white "eye" staring
down at him!

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271

He picked up his pace, eager to get out of there. The
return trip would be nothing compared to this long,
tedious crawl —just sit down and push away, and he
would be able to slide all the way down to the airlock!

He emerged into thickly felling snow and saw that
the servos had wrought better than he and Tia had
guessed, for the mouth of the tunnel was outside the
area of avalanche, just under an overhanging ridge of
stone. That must have been what the snow had built up
upon; small wonder it buried Tia four meters under
when she triggered it! Fortunately, snow could be
melted; when they needed to leave, she could fire up
her thrusters and increase the surface temperature of
her skin, and turn it all to water and steam. Well, that
was the theory, anyway.

That was assuming it didn't rain and melt away her
cover before then.

By Tia's best guess, it was late afternoon, and he
should be able to get to the site and look around a little
before dark fell. At that point, the best thing he could
do would be to get under cover somewhere and curl
up for the night. This time he had padded all the
uncomfortable spots in the suit, and he'd worn soft,
old, exercise clothing. It shouldn't be any less comfort-
able than some of his bunks as a cadet

He took a bearing from the heads-up display inside
his helmet and headed for the site.

"Tia," he called. "Tia, come in."

"Reading you loud and dear, Alex," she responded
immediately. Funny how easy it was to think of her as a
person sitting back in that ship, eyes glued to the
screens that showed his location, hands steady on the
com controls —

Stop that. Maybe it's a nice picture, but it's one that can get
you in more trouble than you already have. "Tia, we have the
right place, all right." He toggled his external

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Anne McCaffrey fc? Mercedes Lackey

suit-camera and gave her a panoramic sweep from his
vantage point above the valley holding the site. It was
fairly obvious that this place was subject to some pretty
heavy-duty windstorms; the buildings were all built
into the lee of the hills, and the hills themselves had
been sculpted by the prevailing winds until they looked
like cresting waves. No doubt either why the entities
who built this place used rounded forms; less for the
winds to catch on.

"Does this look like any architecture in your banks?"
he asked, panning across the buildings. "I sure as heck
don't recognize it."

"Nothing here," she replied, fascination evident in
her voice. "This is amazing! That's not metal, I don't
think — could it be ceramic?"

"Maybe some kind of synthetic," Alex hazarded.
"Plague or not, there are going to be murders done
over the right to excavate this place. How in the name
of the spirits of space did that Survey tech just dismiss
this with 'presence of structures'?"

"We'll never know," Tia responded. "Well, since
there can't be two sites like this in this area, and since
these buildings match the ones in Hank's holos, we can
at least assume that we have the right planet. Now —
about the caches — "

"I'm going down," he said, feeling for footholds in
the snow. It crunched under his feet as he eased down
sideways, one careful step at a time. Now that he was
out of Tia's valley, there were signs everywhere of
freeze-thaw cycles. Under the most recent layer of
snow, the stuff was dirty and covered with a crust of
granular ice. It made for perilous walking. "The wind
is picking up, by the way. I think that blizzard followed
us in."

"That certainly figures," she said with resignation.

As he eased over die lip of the valley, he saw the caves
— or rather, storage areas — cut into the protected side

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273

Of the face of a lower level canyon cutting through the
middle of the valley. There were more buildings down
there, too, and some kind of strange pylons — but it
was the "caves" that interested him most. Regular,
ovoid holes cut into the earth and rock that were then
plugged with something rather like cement, a sub-
stance slighdy different in color from the surrounding
earth and stone. Those nearest him were still sealed;
those nearest the building with the appearing-
disappearing roof were open.

He worked his way down the valley to the buildings
and found to his relief that there was actually a kind of
staircase cut into the rock, going down to the second
level. Protected from the worst of the weather by the
building in front of it, while it was a bit slippery, it
wasn't as hazardous as his descent into the valley had
been.

It was a good thing that the contents of Hank's cabin
and the holos the man had taken had prepared him for
what he saw.

The wall of the valley where the storage caves had
been opened looked like the inside of Ali Baba's cave.
The storage caches proved to be much smaller than
Alex had thought; the "window" slits in the nearby
building were tiny, as might have been expected in a
place with the kind of punishing weather this planet
had. That had made the caches themselves appear
much larger in the holos. In reality, they were about as
tall as his waist and no deeper than two or three meters.
That was more than enough to hold a king's ransom in
treasure....

Much hadn't even been taken. In one of the nearest,
ceramic statuary and pottery had been left behind as
worthless — some had been broken by careless han-
dling, and Alex winced.

There were dozens of caches that had been opened
and cleaned out; perhaps a dozen more with

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275

less-desirable objects still inside. There were dozens
more, still sealed, running down the length of the
canyon wall —

And one whose entrance had been sealed with some
kind of a heat-weapon, a weapon that had been turned
on the entrance until the rock slagged and melted
metal ran with it, mingling and forming a new, per-
manent plug.

"Do you think that's where the plague bug came
from?" Tia asked in his ear.

"I think it's a good bet, anyway," he said absently. "I
sure hope so, anyway."

Suddenly, with the prospect of contamination loom-
ing large in his mind, the shine of metal and sheen of
priceless ceramic lost its allure. Whether it is or isn't, there
is no way I am going to crack this suit, I don't care what is out
there. Hank and the other man drifted in his memory
like grisly ghosts. The suit, no longer a prison, had just
become the most desirable place in the universe.

Oh, I just love this suit....

Nevertheless, he moved forward towards the
already-opened caches, augmenting the fading light
with his suit-lamp. The caches themselves were very
old; that much was evident from the weathering and
buildup of debris and dirt along the side of the canyon
wall. The looters must have opened up one of the
caches out of sheer curiosity or by accident while look-
ing for something else. Perhaps they had been
exploring the area with an eye to a safe haven.
Whatever had led them to uncover the first, they had
then cleared away the buildup all along the wall,
exposing the rest. And it looked as if the loot of a
thousand worlds had been tucked away here.

He began taking careful holos of every thing that had
been left behind, Tia recording the tiniest details as he
covered every angle, every millimeter. At least this way,
if anything more was smashed there would be a record

of it Some things he picked up and stashed in his pack
to bring back with him — a curious metal book, for
instance—

Alex moved forward again, reaching out for a dis-
carded ceramic statue of some kind of winged biped —

"Al&c!" Tia exclaimed urgendy. He started back, his
hand dosing on empty air.

"What?" he snapped. "I — "

"Alex, you have to get back here now," she inter-
rupted. "The alarms just went off. They're back, and
they're heading in to land right now!"

"Alex!" Tia cried, as her readouts showed the pirates
making their descent burn and Alex moving away from
her, not back in. "Alex, what are you doing?"

Dusk was already making it hard to see out there,
even for her. She couldn't imagine what it was like for
him.

"I'm going to hide out in the upper level of one of
these buildings and watch these clowns," Alex replied
calmly. "There's a place up on this one where I can get
in at about the second-story level—see?"

He was right; the structure of the building gave him
easy hand- and foot-holds up to the window-slits on the
second floor. Once there, since the building had fallen in
at that point, he would be able to hide himself up above
eye-level. And with the way that the blizzard was kicking
up, his tracks would be hidden in a matter of moments.

"But—" she protested. "You're all alone out there!"
She tried to keep her mind dear, but a thousand hor-
rible possibilities ran around and around inside her
thoughts, making her frantic. "There's no way I can
help you if you're caught!"

"I won't be caught," he said confidently, finding
handholds and beginning his climb.

It was already too late anyway; the pirates had begun
entry. Even if he left now, he'd never make it back to the

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safety of the tunnel before they landed. If they had
heat-sensors, they couldn't help but notice him, scram,
bling across the snow,

She poured relaxants into her blood and tried to stay
as calm as he obviously felt, but it wasn't working. As
the looters passed behind the planet's opposite side, he
reached the top of the first tier of window-slits, moving
slowly and deliberately — so deliberately that she
wanted to scream at him to hurry.

As they hit the edge of the blizzard, Alex reached the
broken place in the second story. And just as he
tumbled over the edge into the relatively safe darkness
behind the, wall, they slowed for descent, playing
searchlights all over the entire valley, cutting pathways
ofbrightness across the gloom and thickly felling snow.

Alex took advantage of the lights, moving only after
they had passed so that he had a chance to see exactly
what lay in the room he had fallen into.

Nothing, actually; it was an empty section with a
curved inner and outer wall, one door in the inner
wall, and a wall at either end. Roughly half of the curv-
ing roof had fallen in; not much, really. Dirt and snow
mounded under the break, near the join of end wall
and outer wall the windows were still intact, and the
floor was relatively clean. That was where Alex went.

From there he had a superb view of both the caches
and the building that the looters were slowly lowering
their ship into. Tia watched carefully and decided that
her guess about an AI in-system pilot was probably cor-
rect; the movements of the ship had the jerkiness she
associated with AIs. She kept expecting the looters to
pick up Alex's signal, but evidently they were not
expecting anyone to find this place — they seemed to
be taking no precautions whatsoever. They didn't set
any telltales or any alerts, and once they landed the
ship and began disembarking from it, they made no ef-
fort to maintain silence.

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277

On the other hand, given the truly appalling
weather, perhaps they had no reason to be cautious.
The worst of the blizzard was moving in, and not even
the best of AIs could have landed in thai, kind of buffet-
ing wind. She was just glad that Alex was under cover.

The storm didn't stop the looters from sending out
crews to open up a new cache, however....

She could hardly believe her sensors when she saw,
via Alex's camera, a half-dozen fights bobbing down
the canyon floor coming towards his hiding place. She
switched to IR scan and saw that there were three times
that many men, three to a light. None of them were
wearing pressure-suits, although they were bundled
up in cold weather survival gear.

"I don't believe they're doing that," Alex muttered.

"Neither do I," she replied softly. "That storm is
going to be a killing blizzard in a moment. They're out
of their minds."

She scanned up and down the radio wavelengths,
looking for the one the looters were using. She found it
soon enough; unmistakable by the paint-peeling lan-
guage being used. While Alex huddled in his shelter,
the men below him broke open yet another cache and
began shoveling what were probably priceless artifacts
into sacks as if they were so many rocks. Tia winced,
and thought it likely that Alex was doing the same.

The looters were obviously aware that they were
working against time; their haste alone showed the feet
that they knew the worst of the storm was yet to come.
Whoever was manning the radio back at the ship kept
them appraised of their situation, and before long, he
began warning them that it was time to start back,
before the blizzard got so bad they would never be able
to make it the few hundred meters back to their ship.

They would not be able to take the full fury of the
storm—but Alex, in his pressure-suit, would be able to
handle just about anything. With his heads-up helmet

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Aime McCaffrey £9* Mercedes lackey

displays, he didn't need to be able to see where he was
going. Was it possible that he would be able to sneak
back to her under the cover of the blizzard?

It was certainly worth a try.

The leader of the looters finally growled an acknow-
ledgement to the radio operator. "We're comin' in,
keep yer boots on," he snarled, as the lights turned
away from the cache and moved slowly back up the
canyon. The operator shut up; a moment later a signal
beacon shone wanly through the thickening snow at
the other end of the tiny valley. Soon the lights of the
looters had been swallowed up by darkness and heavy
snowfall — then the beacon faded as the snow and
wind picked up still more.

"Alex," she said urgently, "do you think you can
make it back to me?"

"Did you record me corning in?" he asked.

"Yes," she assured him. "Every step. I ought to be
able to guide you pretty well. You won't get a better
chance. Without the storm to cover you, they'll spot
you before you've gone a meter."

He peered out his window again, her camera
"seeing" what he saw — there was nothing out there.
Wind and snow made a solid wall just outside the build-
ing. Even Tia's IR scan couldn't penetrate it

Til try it," he said. "You're right. There won't ever
be a better chance."

Alex ignored the darkness outside his helmet and
concentrated on the HUD projected on the inner sur-
face. This was a lot like fly-by-wire training—or virtual
reality. Ignore what your eyes and senses wanted you
to do and concentrate on what the instruments are tell-
ing you.

Right now, they said he was near the entrance to the
valley hiding Tia.

It had been a long, frightening walk. The pressure-

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279

suit was protection against anything that the blizzard
flung at him, but if he made a wrong step — well, it
wouldn't save him from a long fell. And it wouldn't save
him from being crushed by an avalanche if something
triggered another one. Snow built up quickly under
conditions like this.

It helped to think of Tia as he imagined her; made
him feel warm inside. She kept a cheerful monologue
going in his left ear, telling him what she had identified
from the holos they'd made before the looters arrived.
Sometimes he answered her, mostly he just listened.
She was warmth and life in a world of darkness and
cold, and as long as he could think of her sitting in the
pilot's seat, with her sparkling eyes and puckish smile,
he could muster the strength to keep his feet moving
against the increasingly heavy weight of the snow.

Tired — he was getting so tired. It was tempting to
lie down and let the snow cover him for a while as he
took a little rest.

"Alex—you're here—" she said suddenly, breaking
off in the middle of the sentence.

"I'm where?" he said stupidly. He was so tired —

"You're here — the entrance to the tunnel is some-
where around there — " The urgency in her voice
woke him out of the kind of stupor he had been in.
"Feel around for the rock face — the tunnel may be
covered with snow, but you should be able to find it."

That was something he hadn't even thought of!
What if the entrance to the tunnel had filled in? He'd
be stuck out here in the blizzard, nowhere to go, out
alone in the cold!

Stop that! he told himself sternly. Just stop that! Youll be
aUright. The suit heaters luon't give out in this—they'remade
for space, a little cold blizzard isn't going to balk them!

Unless the cold snow dogged them somehow ... or
the wind was too much for them to compensate for...
or they just plain gave up and died....

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Anne McCaffrey &? Mercedes Latkey

He stumbled to his right, hands out, feeling franti-
cally in the darkness for the rock face. He stumbled
into it, cracking his faceplate against the stone. For-
tunately the plate was made of sterner stuff than simple
polyglas; although his head rang, the plate was fine.

Well, diere was the rock. Now where—

The ground gave away beneath his feet, and he
yelled with fear as he fell — the back of his head smack-
ed against something and he kept falling—

No-
No, he wasn't falling, he was sliding. He'd fallen into
the tunnel!

Quickly he spread hands and feet against the wall of
the tunnel to slow himself and toggled his headlamp
on; it had been useless in the blizzard. Now it was still
pretty useless, but the light reflecting from the white
ice above his face made him want to laugh with
pleasure. Light! At last!

Light — and more of it down below his feet. The
opposite end of the tunnel glowed with warm, white
light as Tia opened the airlock and turned on the light
inside it. He shot down the long dark tunnel and into
the brightness, no longer caring if he hit hard when he
landed. Caring only that he was coming home.

Coming home....

CHAPTERNINE

The whisper of a sensor-sweep across the landscape

— like the brush of silk across Tia's skin, when she'd
had skin. Like something not-quite-heard in the dis-
tance.

Tia stayed quiet and concentrated on keeping all of
her outputs as low as possible. We aren't here. You can't
fmdus. Why don't you just fill your holds and go away?

What had been a good hiding place was now a trap.
Tia had shut down every system she could; Alex moved
as little as possible. She had no way of knowing how
sophisticated the pirates' systems were, so they were
both operating on the assumption that anything out of
the ordinary would alert the enemy to their presence, if
not their location.

Whether or not the looters' initial carelessness had been
because of the storm or because of greed — or whether
they had been alerted by something she or Alex had done

— now they were displaying all the caution Tia had
expected of them. Telltales and alarms were in place;
irregular sensor sweeps made it impossible for Alex to
make a second trip to the ruins without being caught

And now there were two more ships in orbit that had
arrived while the blizzard still raged. One of those two
ships had checked the satellite. Had they found Alex's
handiwork, or were they simply following a procedure
they had always followed? She had no way of knowing.

Whatever the case, those two ships kept her from
taking off— and she wasn't going to transmit anything
to the satellite. It was still broadcasting, and they only

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Anne McCaffrey & Mercedes Lackey

hoped it was because the pirates hadn't checked that
closely. But it could have been because the pirates
wanted them lulled into thinking they were safe.

So Tia had shut offall nonessential systems, and they
used no active sensors, relying entirely on passive
receptors. Knowing that sound could carry even past
her blanket of snow, especially percussive sounds, Alex
padded about in stocking feet when he walked at all.
Three days of this now — and no sjgn that the looters
were ready to leave yet

Mosdy he and Tia studied holos and the few artifacts
that he had brought out of the cache area — once Tia
had vacuum-purged them and sterilized them to a fair-
thee-well.

After all, she kept telling herself, the pirates couldn't
stay up there forever. Could they?

Unless they had some idea that Tia was already here.
Someone had leaked what they knew about Hank and
his cargo when they were on Presley Station. The leak
could have gone beyond the station.

She was frightened and could not tell him; strung as
tightly as piano strings with anxiety, with no way to
work off the tension.

She knew that the same thoughts troubled Alex,
although he never voiced them. Instead, he con-
centrated his attention completely on the enigmatic
book of metal plates he had brought out of the cache.

There were glyphs of some kind etched into it, along
the right edge of each plate, and a peculiarly matte-
finished strip along the left edge of each. But most
importantly, the middle of each page was covered with
the pinprick patterns of what could only be stellar con-
figurations. Having spent so much time studying
stellar maps, both of them had recognized that they
were nav-guides immediately. But to what — and far
more importantly, what was the reference point.-
There was no way of knowing that she could see.

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283

And who had made the book in the first place? The
glyphs had an odd sort of familiarity about them, but
nothing she was able to put a figurative finger on.

It was enough of a puzzle to keep Alex busy, but not
enough to occupy her. It was very easy to spend a lot of
time brooding over her brawn. Slumped in his chair,
peculiarly handsome face intent, with a single light
shining down on his head and the artifact, with the rest
of the room in darkness — or staring into a screen full
of data —

Like a scene out of a thriller-holo. The hero, biding his
time, ready to crack under the strain but not going to
show his vulnerability; the enemies waiting above. Price-
less data in their hands, data that they dared not allow the
enemy to have. The hero, thinking about the lover he
had left behind, wondering ifhe will ever see her again—

SheUcrack. This was getting her nowhere.

She couldn't pace, she couldn't bite her nails, she
couldn't even read to distract herself. Finally she
activated a single servo and sent it discretely into his
cabin to clean it It hadn't been cleaned since they'd left
the base; mostly Alex had just shoved things into
drawers and closets and locked the doors down. She
couldn't dean his clothing now — but as soon as they
shook the hounds off their trail —

If they shook the hounds off their trail — if the
second avalanche and the blizzard hadn't piled too
much snow on top of them to clear away. There were
eight meters of snow up there now, not four. Much
more, and she might not be able to blast free.

Stop that. We'll get out of this.

Carefully she cleaned each drawer and closet,
replacing what wasn't dirty and having the servo kid-
nap what was. Carefully, because there were lots of
loose objects shoved in with the clothing.

But she never expected the one she found tumbled
in among the bedcoverings.

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Anne McCaffrey fe? Mercedes Lackey

A holocube—of her.

She turned the cube over and over in the servo's
pinchers, changing the pictures, finding all of them
familiar. Scenes of her from before her illness; the
birthday party, posing with Theodore Bear—

Standing in her brand new pressure-suit in front of a
fragment of wall covered with EsKay glyphs—that was
a funny one; Mum had teased Dad about it because
he'd focused on the glyphs out of habit She'd come out
half out of the picture, but the glyphs had been nice
and sharp.

It hit her like a jolt of current. The glyphs. That was
where she had seen them before! Oh, these were
carved rather than inscribed, and time and sandstorms
had worn them down to mere suggestions. They were
formed in a kind of cursive style, where the ones on the
book were angular—but—

She ran a quick comparison and got another jolt, this
time of elation. "Alex!" she whispered excitedly.
"Look!"

She popped the glyphs from the old holo up on her
screen as he looked up, took the graphic of die third
page of the book, and superimposed the one over the
other. Aside from the differences in style, they were a
perfect match.

"EsKays," he murmured, his tone awestruck.
"Spirits of space — this book was made by the EsKays!"

"I think these caches and buildings must have been
made by some race that knew the EsKays," she replied.
"But even if they weren't — Alex, how much will you
wager that this little set of charts shows the EsKay
homeworld, once you figure out how to decipher it?"

"It would make sense," he said, after a moment.
"Look at this smooth area on every page — always in
the same place along the edge. I bet this is some kind of
recording medium, like a datahedron — maybe
optical—"

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285

"Let me look at it," she demanded. "Put it in the lab."
Now she had something to keep her attention.
And something to keep her mind off him.

Alex had nothing more to do but read and brood.
While Tia bent all the resources at her disposal on the
artifact, he was left staring at screens and hoping the
pirates didn't think to scan for large masses of metal
under the snow.

Reading palled after too long; music was out because
it could be detected, even if he were wearing head-
phones, and he hated headphones. He'd never been
much of a one for entertainment holos, and they made
at least as much noise as music.

That left him alone in the dark with his thoughts,
which kept turning back towards Tia. He knew her
childhood very well now — accessing the data available
publicly and then doing the unthinkable, at least for
anyone in the BB program: contacting Doctor Kennet
and Doctor Anna and pumping them for information.
Not with any great subtlety, he feared, but they hadn't
taken it amiss. Of course, if anyone in CS found out
what he'd been doing, he would be in major trouble.
There was an ugly name for his feeling about Tia.

Fixation.

After that single attempt at finding a temporary com-
panion in port, Alex had left the women alone —
because he kept picking ones who looked like Tia. He
had thought it would all wear off after a while; that
sooner or later, since nothing could be done about it,
the fascination would fade away.

And meanwhile, or so he'd told himself, it only made
sense to learn as much about Tia as he could. She was
unique; the oldest child ever to have been put into a
shell. He had to be very careful with someone like that;
the normal parameters of a brain-brawn relationship
simply would not apply.

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Anne McCaffrey fef Mercedes Lackey

So now he knew what she had looked like — and
thanks to computer-projection, what she would have
looked like if she had never caught that hideous disease
and had grown up normally. Why, she might even have
wound up at the Academy, if she hadn't chosen to follow
in her femous parents' footsteps. He knew most of the
details, not only of her pre-shell life, but of her life at Lab
Schools. He knew as much about her as he would have if
she had been his own sibling — except that his feelings
about her had been anything but brotherly.

But he had told himself that they were brotherly, that
he was not falling in love with a kind of ghost, that
everything would be fine. He'd believed it, too.

That is, up until he ran into Chria Chance and her
gunner.

There was no doubt in his mind from the moment
the screen lit up that Chria and Neil were an item. The
signs were there for anyone who knew how to read
body language, especially for someone who knew
Chria as well as Alex did. And his initial reaction to the
relationship caught him completely by surprise.

Envy. Sheer, raw, uncomplicated envy. Not jealousy,
for he wasn't at all interested in Chria and never had
been. In some ways, he was very happy for her; she
had been truly the poor little rich girl — High Family
with four very proper brothers and sisters who were
making the Family even more prestige and money. She
alone had been the rebel; she of all of them had wanted
something more than a proper position, a place on a
board of o!irectors, and a bloodless, loveless, high-status
spouse. After she threatened to bring disgrace on all of
them, blackmailing them by swearing she would join a
shatter-rock synthocom band under her real name,
they had permitted her the Academy under an
assumed one.

No, he was happy for Chria; she had found exactly
the life and partners that she had longed for.

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287

But he wanted what she had — only he wanted it to
be Tla sitting back there in the second seat Or Tia in
the front and himself in the back; it didn't much matter
who was the one in command, if he could have had her
there.

The strength of his feelings had been so unexpected
that he had not known what to do with them — so he
had attempted, clumsily, to cover them. Fortunately,
everyone involved seemed to put his surliness down to
a combination of pain from his injuries and wooziness
due to the pain-pills he'd gulped.

If only it had been...

fm in love with someone I can't touch, can't hold, can't even
tell that I love her, he thought with despair, clenching his
hand tightly on the armrest of his chair. /—

"Alex?" Tia whispered, her voice sounding
unnaturally loud in the silence of the ship, for she had
turned even the ventilation system down to a mini-
mum. "Alex, I've decoded the storage-mode. It's
old-foshioned hard-etched binary storage and I think
that it's nav directions that relate to the stellar map on
the page. Once I find a reference point I recognize, I'm
pretty sure I can decode it all eventually. I got some
ideas, though, since I was able to match some place-
name glyphs — and we were right — I'm positive that
these are directions to all the EsKay bases from the
homeworld! So if we could just find a base — "

"And trace it back!" This was what she'd been look-
ing for from the beginning, and excitement/or her
shoved aside all other feelings for the moment. "What's
the deal—why the primitive navcharts? Not that it isn't
a break for us, but if they were space-going, why limit
yourself to a crawl?"

"Well, the storage medium is pretty hard to damage;
you wouldn't believe how strong it is. So I can see why
they chose it over something like a datahedron that a
strong magnetic field can wipe. As for why the charts

288

Amu McCaffrey &f Mercedes Lackey

themselves are so primitive, near as I can make out,
they didn't have Singularity Drive and they could or
would only warp between stars, using them as naviga-
tional stepping-stones. I don't know why; there may be
something there that would give the reason, but I can't
decode it." There was something odd and subdued
about her voice —

"What, hopping like a Survey ship?" he asked
incredulously. "You could spend years getting across
space that way!"

"Maybe they didn't care. Maybe hyper made them
sick." Now he recognized what the odd tone in her
voice was; she didn't seem terribly excited, now that she
had what she was looking for.

"Well, we don't have to do that," he pointed out.
"Once we get out of here, we can backtrack to the
EsKay homework!, make a couple of jumps, and we'll
be stellar celebs! All we have to do is — "

"Is forget about our responsibilities," she said,
sharply. "Or else 'forget* to turn in this book with the
rest of the loot until we get a long leave. Or turn it in
and hope no one else beats us to the punch."

Keeping the book was out of the question, and he
dismissed it out of hand. "They won't," he replied posi-
tively. "No one else has spent as much time staring at
star-charts as we have. You've said as much yourself;
the archeologists at the Institute get very specialized
and see things in a very narrow way. I don't think that
there's the slightest chance that anyone will figure out
what this book means within the next four or five years.
But you're right about having responsibilities; we are
under a hard contract to the Institute. We'll have to
wait until we can buy or earn a long leave—"

"That's not what's bothering me," she interrupted,
in a very soft voice. "It's — the ethics of it. If we hold
back this information, how are we any better than
those pirates out there?"

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289

"How do you mean?" he asked, startled.

"Withholding information — that's like data piracy,

, a way. We're holding back, not only the data, but the
ireer of whoever is the EsKay specialist right now —
>r Lana Courtney-Rai, I think. In feet, if we keep
iis to ourselves, we'll be stealing her career advance-
icnt I mean, we aren't even real archeologists!" There
ras no mistaking the distress in her voice.

"I think I see what you mean." And he did; he could
inderstand it all too well. He'd seen both his parents
>assed over for promotions in favor of someone who
ladn't earned the advancement but who "knew the
right people." He'd seen the same thing happen at the
Academy. It wasn't fair or right. "We can't do every-
ling, can we?" he said slowly. "Not like in the holos,
the heroes can fight off pirates while perform-
ig brain surgery."

Tia made a sad little chuckle. "I'm beginning to think
t's all we can do just to get our real job done right"

He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling.
'Funny. When this quest of ours was all theoretical, it
VSLS one thing — but we really can't go shooting offby
ourselves and still do our duty, the duty that people are
expecting us to do."

She didn't sigh, but her voice was heavy with regret

"It's not only a question of ethics, but of priorities. We

in simply go on doing what we do best — and Chria

Chance really put her finger on it, when she pointed

jut that she and Neil and Pol wouldn't know how to

^cognize our plague spot, and we would. She knows

?hen she should let the experts take over. I hate to give

ip on the dream — but in this case, that dream was the

id of thing a kid could have, but—"

"But it's time to grow up — and let someone else
)lay," Alex said firmly.

'Maybe we could go pretend to be archeologists,"
la added, "but we'd steal someone else's career in the

290	ArtneMcCaffny & Mercedes Lackey

process. Become second-rate — but very, very lucky
amateur pot-hunters,"

He sighed for both of them. "They'd hate us, you
know. Everyone we respected would hate us. And we'd
be celebrities, but we wouldn't be real archeologists."

"Alex?" she said, after a long silence. "I think we
should just seal that book up with our findings and
what we've deduced about it. Then we should lock it
up with the rest of the loot and go on being a stellar CS
team. Even if it does get awfully boring running mail
and supplies, sometimes."

"It's not boring now," he said ruefully, without think-
ing. "I kind of wish it was."

Silence for a long time, then she made a tiny sound
that he would have identified as a whimper in a
sofiperson. "I wish you hadn't reminded me," she said.

"Why?"

"Because—because it seems as if we're never going
to get out of here — that they're going to find us even-
tually."

"Stop that," he replied sharply, reacting to the note
of panic in her voice. "They can't hover up there
forever. They'll run out of supplies, for one thing."

"So will we," she countered.

"And they'll run out of patience! Tia, think — these
are pirates, and they don't even know there's anyone
else here, not for certain, anyway! When they don't
find anything, they'll give up and take their loot off to
sell!" He wanted, badly, to pace—but that would make
noise. "We can leave when they're gone!"
"If— we can get out"
"What?" he said, startled.

"I didn't want you to worry — but there's been two
avalanches since you got back, and all the snow the bliz-
zard dropped."

He stared at her column in numbed shock, but she

wasn't finished.

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291

"There's about eleven meters of snow above us. I
don't know if I can get out. And even if CenSec shows
up, I don't know if they'll hear a hail under all this ice. I
lost the signals from the surface right after that last
avalanche, and the satellite signals are getting too feint
to read dearly.11

He said the first thing that came into his head, trying
to lighten the mood, but without running it past his
internal censor first "Well, at least if I'm going to be
frozen into a glacier for all eternity, I've got my love to
keep me warm."

He stopped himself, but not in time. Oh, brilliant.
Now she thinks she's locked in an iceberg with a fixated mad-
man!

"Do — " Her voice sounded choked, probably with
shock. "Do you mean that?"

He could have shot himself. "Tia," he began bab-
bling, "it's all right, really, I mean I'm not going to go
crazy and try to crack your column or anything, I really
am all right, I — "

"Did you mean that?" she persisted.

"I — " Oh well. It's on the record. You can't make it worse.
"Yes. I don't know, it just sort of— happened." He
shrugged helplessly. "It's not anything crazy, like a fixa-
tion. But, well — I just don't want any partner of any
kind but you. If that's love, then I guess I love you. And
I really, really love you a lot." He sighed and rubbed his
temples. "So there it is, out in the open at last. I hope I
don't offend or frighten you, but you're the best thing
that ever happened to me, and that's a feet I'd rather
be with you than anyone else I know, or know of." He
managed a faint grin. "Holostars and stellar celebs
included."

The plexy cover to Ted Bear's little "shrine" popped
open, and he jumped.

"I can't touch you, and you can't touch me, but —
would you like to hug Theodore?" she replied softly. "I

292

Arme McCaffrey &? Mercedes Lackey

love you, too, Alex. I think I have ever since you went
out to face the Zombie Bug. You're the bravest,
cleverest, most wonderful brawn I could ever imagine,
and I wouldn't want to be anyone's partner but yours,"

The offer of her childhood friend was the closest she
could come to intimacy — and he knew it

He got up, carefully, and took the little fellow down
out of his wall-home, hugging the soft little bear once,
hard, before he restored him again and closed the
door.

"You have a magnificent lady, Theodore Bear," he
told the solemn-faced little toy. "And I'm going to do my
best to make her happy."

He turned back to her column and cleared his
throat, carefully. Time, and more than time, to change
the subject. "Right," he said. "Now that we've both
established why we've been touchy—let's see if we can
figure out what our options are."

"Options?" she replied, confused.

"Certainly." He raised his chin defiantly. "I intend to
spend the rest of my life with you — and I don't intend
that to be restricted to how long it takes before the
pirates find us or we freeze to death! So let's figure out
some options, hang it all!"

To his great joy and relief, she actually laughed. And
if there was an edge of hysteria in it, he chose to ignore
that little nuance.

"Right," she said. "Options. Well, we can start with
the servos, I guess...."

Tia snuggled down into his arms, and turned into a
big blue toy bear. The bear looked at him reproach-
fully.

He started to get up, but the bedcoverings had
turned to snowdrifts, and he was frozen in place. The
bear tried to chip him out, but its blunt arms were too
soft to make an impression on the ice-covered drifts.

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293

Then he heard rumbling—and looked up, to see an
avalanche poised to crash down on him like some kind
of slow-motion wave —

The avalanche rumbled, and Tia-the-bear growled
back, interposing herself between him and the tum-
bling snow —

'Alex, wake up!"

He floundered awake, flailing at the bedclothes, hit-
ting the light button more by accident than anything
else. He blinked as the light came up full, blinding him,
his legs trapped in a tangle of sheets and blankets.
"What?" he said, his tongue too thick for his mouth.
"Who? Where?"

"Alex," Tia said, her voice strained, but excited.
"Alex, I have been trying to get you to wake up for fif-
teen minutes! There's a CenSec ship Upstairs, and it's
beating the tail off those two pirates!"

CenSec? Spirits of space—

"What happened?" he asked, grabbing for clothing
and pulling it on. "From the beginning — "

"The first I knew of it was when one of the pirates sent
a warning down to the ship here to stay under cover and
quiet. I got the impression that they thought it was just an
ordinary Survey ship, until it locked onto one of them
and started blasting." Tia had brought up all of her sys-
tems again; fresher air was moving briskly through the
ventilator, all the lights and boards were up and active in
the main cabin. "That was when all the scans stopped —
and I started breaking loose. I ran that freeze-thaw cycle
you suggested, and a couple of minutes ago, 1 fired the
engines. I can definitely move, and I'm pretty sure I can
pull out of here without too much trouble. 1 might lose
some paint and some bits of things on my surface, but
nothing that can'tbe repaired."

"What about Upstairs?" he asked, running for his
chair without stopping for shoes or even socks, and
strapping himself down.

294

Aime McCaffrey &? Mercedes Lackey

"Good news and bad news. The CenSec ship looks
like its going to take both the pirates," she replied.
"The bad news is that while I can receive, I can't seem
to broadcast. The ice might have jammed something, I

can't tell."

"All right; we can move, and the ambush Upstairs is
being taken care of." Alex clipped the last of his
restraint belts in place; when Tia moved, it could be
abruptly, and with little warning. "But if we can't
broadcast, we can't warn CenSec that there's another
ship down here — we can't even identify ourselves as a
friend. And we'll be a sitting duck for the pirates if we
try to rise. They can just hide in their blinds and
ambush the CenSec ship, then wait to see if we come
out of hiding — as soon as we dear their horizon they
can pot us."

Alex considered the problem as dispassionately as he
could. "Can we stay below their horizon until we're out
of range?"

Tia threw up a map as an answer. If the pirate chose
to pursue them, there was no way that she could stay
out of range of medium guns, and they had to assume
that was what the pirate had.

"There has to be a way to keep them on the ground,
somehow," Alex muttered, chewing a hangnail, aware
that with every second that passed their window of
opportunity was closing. "What's going on Upstairs?"

"The first ship is heavily damaged. If I'm reading the
tactics right, the CenSec ship is going to move in for the
kill — provided the other pirate gives him a chance."

Alex turned his attention back to their own problem.
"If we could just cripple them — throw enough rocks
down on them or — wait a minute. Bring up the views
of the building they're hiding in — the ones you got
from my camera."

Tia obeyed, and Alex studied the situation carefully,
matching pictures with memory. " Interesting thing

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295

about those hills — see how some of them look broken-
off, as if those tips get too heavy to support after a
while? I bet that's because the winds come in from dif-
ferent directions and scour out under the crests once in
a while. Can you give me a better shot of the hills over-
hanging those buildings?"

"No problem." The viewpoint pulled back, display-
ing one of those wave-crest hills overshadowing the
building with the partial roof. "Alex!" she exclaimed.

"You see it too," he said with satisfaction. "All right
girl, think we can pull this off?"

For answer, she revved her engines. "Be a nice
change to hit back, for once!"

"Then let's lift!"

The engines built from a quiet purr to a bone-deep,
bass rumble, more felt than heard. Tia pulled in her
landing gear, then began rocking herself by engaging
null-grav, first on the starboard, then on the port side,
each time rolling a little more. Alex did what he could,
playing with the attitude jets, trying to undercut some
of the ice.

Her nose rose, until Alex tilted back hi his chair at
about a forty-five degree angle. That was when Tia cut
loose with the full power of her rear thrusters.

"We're moving!" she shouted over the roar of her own
engines, engines normally reserved only for in-atmos-
phere flight. There was no sensation of movement, but
Alex clearly heard the scrape of ice along her hull, and
winced, knowing that without a long stint in dry dock,
Tia would look worse than Hank's old tramp-
freighter. ...

Suddenly, they were free —

Tia killed the engines and engaged full null-gee
drive, hovering just above the surface of the snow in
eerie silence.

"CenSec got the first ship; the other one jumped
them. It looks pretty even," Tia said shortly, as Alex

296

Anne McCaffrey & Mercedes Lackey

heard the whine of the landing gear being dropped
again. "So far, no one has noticed us. Are you braced?"

"Go for it,** he replied. "Is there anything I can do?"

"Hold on," she said shortly.

She shot skyward, going for altitude. She knew the
capabilities of her hull better than Alex did; he was
going to leave this in her hands. The hill they wanted
was less than a kilometer away — when they'd gotten
high enough, Tia nosed over and dove for it. She
aimed straight for the crest, as if it were a target and she
a projectile.

Sudden fear clutched at his throat, his heart going a
million beats per second. She can't mean to ram—

Alex froze, his hands clutching the armrests.

At the last minute, Tia rolled her nose up, hitting the
crest of the hill with her landing gear instead of her
nose.

The shriek and crunch of agonized metal told Alex
that they were not going to make port anywhere but a
space station now. The impact rammed him back into
his chair, the lights flickered and went out, and crash-
systems deployed, cushioning him from worse shock.
Even so, he blacked out for a moment.

When he came to again, the lights were back on, and
Tia hovered, tilted slighdy askew, above the alien city.

Below and to their right was what was left of the roof-
less building — now buried beneath a pile of ice, earth,

and rock.

"Are you all right?" he managed, though it hurt to

move his jaw.

"Space-worthy," she said, and there was no mistak-
ing the shakiness in her voice. "Barely. I'll be as leaky as
a sieve in anything but the main cabin and the pas-
senger section, though. And I don't know about my
drives—hang on, we're being hailed."

The screen flickered and filled with the image of
Neil, with Chria Chance in the background. "AH One-

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297

Oh-Three-Three, is that you? I assume you had a good
| reason for playing 'chicken' with a mountain?"

'It's us," Alex replied, feeling all of his energy drain
• out as his adrenaline level dropped. "There's another
j»ne of your playmates under that rockpile."
"Ah." Neil said nothing more, simply nodded. "All

t, then. Can you come up to us?"
"We aren't going to be making any landings," Tia
nnted out. "But I don't know about the state of our
Jrives."

Chria leaned over her partner's shoulder. "I
wouldn't trust them if I were you," she said. "But if you
L get up here, we can take you in tow and hold you in
j>rbit until one of the transports shows up. Then you
. ride home in their bay."

"It's a deal," Alex told her — then, with a lift of an
i'ebrow, "I didn't know you could do that"
"There's a lot you don't know," she told him. "Is that
all right with you, Tia?"

"At this point, just about anything would be all right
with me," she replied. "We're on the way."

Tia was still a little dizzy from the call she'd gotten
from the Institute. When you're refitted, we'd like you to take
the first Team into what we think is the EsKay homeworld. You
and Alexander have the most experience in situations where
plague is a possibility of any other courier on contract to us. It
had only made sense; to this day no one knew what had
paralyzed her. She had a vested interest in making sure
the team stayed healthy, and an even bigger one in
helping to find the bug.

Of course, they knew that And they knew she would
never buy out her contract until this assignment was
over. Blackmail? Assuredly. But it was a form of black-
mail she could live with.

Besides, if her plan worked, she would soon be dig-
ging with the Prime Team, not just watching them. It

298

Arme McCaffrey &? Mercedes Lackey

might take a while, but sooner or later, she'd have
enough money made from her investments —

Once she paid for the repairs, that is. From the
remarks of the techs working on her hull, they would
not be cheap.

Then Stirling stunned her again, presenting her
with the figures in her account.

"So, my dear lady," said Stirling, "between an
unspecified reward from the Drug Enforcement Arm,
the bonus for decoding the purpose of the EsKay nav-
book, the fine return from your last investment, and
the finders' fee for that impressive treasure trove, you
are quite a wealthy shellperson."

"So I see," Tia replied, more than a little dazed. "But
what about the bill for repairs — "

"Covered by CenSec." Stirling wasn't precisely gloat-
ing, but he was certainly enjoying himself. "And if you
don't mind my saying so, that was my work. I merely
repeated what you had told me about the situation —
pointed out that your damages were due entirely to a
civilian aiding in the apprehension of dangerous
criminals — and CenSec seemed positively eager to
have the bills transferred over. When I mentioned how
you had kept their ship from ambush from the ground,
they decided you needed that Singularity Drive you've
always wanted."

She suspected he had done more than merely men-
tion it... perhaps she ought to see if she could get Lee
Stirling as her Advocate, instead of the softperson she
had, who had done nothing about the repairs or the
drive! So, she would not have to spend a single penny
of all those bonuses on her own repairs! "What about
my investments in the prosthetics firm? And what if I
take my bonus money and plow it back into Moto-Pros-

thetics?"

"Doing brilliantly. And if you do that — hmm — do
you realize you'll have a controlling interest?" Stirling

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299

sounded quite amazed. "Is this something you wanted?
You could buy out your contract with all this. Or get
yourself an entire new refit internally and externally."

"Yes," she replied firmly. She was glad that Alex wasn't
aboard at the moment, even though she felt achingly
lonely without the sounds of his footsteps or his tuneless
whistling. This was something she needed absolute
privacy for." In feet, I am going to need a softperson proxy
to go to the Board of Directors for me."

"Now?" Stirling asked.

"As soon as I have controlling interest," she replied.
"The sooner the better."

And it can't be soon enough to suit me.

Alex looked deeply into the bottom of his glass and
decided that this one was going to be his last. He had
achieved the state of floating that passed for euphoria;
any more and he would pass it, and become disgust-
ingly drunk. Probably a weepy drunk, too, all things
considered. That would be a bad thing; despite his
civilian clothing, someone might recognize him as a CS
brawn, and that would be trouble. Besides, this was a
high-class bar as spaceport bars went; human bar-
tender, subdued, restful lighting, comfortable booths
and stools, good music that was not too loud. They
didn't need a maudlin drunk; they really didn't need
any drunk. No point in ruining other people's evening
just because his life was a mess....

He felt the lump in his throat and knew one more
drink would make it spill over into an outpouring of
emotion. The bartender leaned over and said, confid-
ingly, "Buddy, if I were you, I'd cut off about now."

Alex nodded, a little surprised, and swallowed back the
lump. Had liability laws gotten to the point where bar-
tenders were watching their customers for risky behavior?
"Yeah. What I figured." He sniffed a bitand told himself to
straighten up before he became an annoyance.

300

Amu McCaffrey & Mercedes Lackey

The bartender — a human, which was why Alex
had chosen to drink away his troubles here, if such a
thing was possible — did not leave. Instead, he
polished the slick pseudo-wooden bar beside Alex
with a spotless cloth, and said, casually, "If you don't
mind my saying so, buddy, you look like a man with a
problem or two."

Alex laughed, mirthlessly. The man had no idea.
"Yeah. Guess so."

"You want to talk about it?" the bartender persisted.
"That's what they hire me for. That's why you're
paying so much for the drinks."

Alex squinted up at the man, who was perfectly ordi-
nary in a way that seemed very familiar. Conservative
haircut, conservative, casual clothing. Nothing about
the face or the expression to mark him except a certain
air of friendly concern. It was that "air" that tipped him
off— it was very polished, very professional. "Coun-
selor?" he asked, finally.

The bartender nodded to a framed certificate over
the three shelves of antique and exotic botdes behind
the bar. "Licensed. Confidential. Freelance. Been in
the business for five years. You probably can't tell me
anything I haven't heard a hundred times before."

Freelance and confidential meant that whatever
Alex told him would stay with him, and would not be
reported back to his superiors. Alex was both surprised
and unsurprised — the Counselor-attended bars had
been gaining in popularity when he had graduated.
He just hadn't known they'd gotten that popular. He
certainly hadn't expected to find one out here, at a refit
station. People tended to pour out their problems
when they'd been drinking; someone back on old
Terra had figured out that it might be a good idea to
give them someone to talk to who might be able to
tender some reasonable advice. Now, so he'd heard,
there were more Counselors behind bars than there

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301

pwere in offices, and a large number of bartenders were
(going back to school to get Counselor's licenses.

Suddenly the need to unburden himself to someone
was too much to withstand. "Ever been in love?" he
asked, staring back down at the empty glass and shov-
ing it back and forth a little between his index fingers.

The bartender took the glass away and replaced it
with a cup of coSee. "Not personally, but I've seen a lot
of people who are — or think they are."

"Ah." Alex transferred his gaze to the cup, which
steamed very nicely. "I wouldn't advise it"

"Yeah. A lot of them say that. Personal troubles with
your significant?" the bartender-cwm-Counselor
prompted. "Maybe it's something I can help out with."

Alex sighed. "Only that I'm in love with someone
that — isn't exactly reachable." He scratched his head
for a moment, trying to think of a way to phrase it
without giving too much away. "Our — uh — profes-
sions are going to keep us apart, no matter what, and
there's some physical problems, too."

The habit of caution was ingrained too deeply.
Freelance Counselor or no, he couldn't bring himself
to tell the whole truth to this man. Not when telling it
could lose him access to Tia altogether, if the wrong
people heard all this.

"Can't you change jobs?" the Counselor asked,
reasonably. "Surely a job isn't worth putting yourself
through misery. From everything I've ever seen or
heard, it's better to have a low-paying job that makes
you happy than a high-paying one that's driving you
into bars."

Alex shook his head, sorrowfully. "That won't help,"
he sighed hopelessly. "It's not just the job, and chang-
ing it will only make things worse. Think of us as—as a
Delphin and an Avithran. She can't swim, I can't fly.
Completely incompatible lives."

And that puts it mildly.

302

Arate McCaffrey &? Mercedes Lackey

The Counselor shook his head, "That doesn't sound
promising, my friend. Romeo and Juliet romances are
all very well for the holos, but they're hell on your
insides. I'd see if I couldn't shake my emotional attach-
ment, if I was you. No matter how much you think you
love someone, you can always turn the heat down if
you decide that's what you want to do about it"

"I'm trying," Alex told him, moving the focus of his
concentration from the coffee cup to the bartender's
face. "Believe me, I'm hying. I've got a couple of weeks
extended leave coming, and I'm going to use every
minute of it in trying. I've got dates lined up; I've got
parties I'm hitting — and a friend from CenSec is plan-
ning on taking me on an extended shore leave crawl."

The bartender nodded, slowly. "I understand, and
seeing a lot of attractive new people is one way to try
and shake an emotional attachment. But friend — you
are not going to find your answer in the bottom of a
botde."

"Maybe not," Alex replied sadly. "But at least I can
find a litde forgetfulness there."

And as the bartender shook his head, he pushed
away from his seat, turned, took a tight grip on his
dubious equilibrium, and walked out the door, looking
for a little more of that forgetfulness.

Angelica Guon-Stirling bint Chad slid into her
leather-upholstered seat and smiled politely at the man
seated next to her at the foot of the huge, black marble
table. He nodded back and returned his attention to
the stock market report he was reading on the screen
of his datalink. Other men and women, dressed in con-
servative suits and the subdued hues of management,
filed in and took the remaining places around the
table. She refrained from chuckling. In a few more
moments, he might well be more interested in her than
in anything that datalink could supply. She'd gotten

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303

entry to the meeting on the pretext of representing her
uncle's firm on some unspecified business — they rep-
resented enough fluid wealth that the secretary had
added her to the agenda and granted her entry to the
sacred boardroom. It was a very well-appointed sacred
boardroom; rich with the scent of expensive leather
and hushed as only a room ringed with high-priced
anti-surveillance equipment could be. The lights were
set at exactly the perfect psychological hue and inten-
sity for the maximum amount of alertness, the chair
cradled her with unobtrusive comfort. The colors of
warm white, cool black, and gray created an air of
efficiency and importance, without being sterile.

None of this intimidated Angelica in the least. She
had seen a hundred such board rooms in the past, and
would probably see a thousand more before her career
had advanced to the point that she was too busy to be
sent out on such missions. Her uncle had not only
chosen her to be Ms. Cade's proxy because they were
related; he had chosen her because she was the best
proxy in the firm. And this particular venture was
going to need a very delicate touch, for what Ms. Cade
wanted was not anything the board of directors of
Moto-Prosthetics was going to be ready for. They
thought in terms of hostile takeovers, poison pills,
golden parachutes. Ms. Cade had an entirely different
agenda. If this were not handled well and profession-
ally, the board might well fight, and that would waste
precious time.

Though it might seem archaic, board meetings still
took place in person. It was too easy to fake holos, to
create a computer-generated simulacrum of someone
who was dead or in cold sleep. That was why she was
here now, with proxy papers in order and properly
filed with all the appropriate authorities. Not that she
minded. This was exciting work, and every once in a
while there was a client like Hypatia Cade, who wanted

304

Aniw McCaffrey fc? Mercedes Lackey

something so different that it made everything else she
had done up to now seem like a training exercise.

The meeting was called to order — and Angelica
stood up before the chairman of the board could bring
up normal business. Now was the time. If she waited
until her scheduled turn, she could be lost or buried in
nonsense — and as of this moment, the board's busi-
ness was no longer what had been scheduled anyway. It
was hers, Angelica's, to dictate. It was a heady brew,
power, and Angelica drank it to the dregs as all eyes
centered on her, most affronted that she had "barged
in" on their business.

"Gentlemen," she said smoothly, catching all their
attentions. "Ladies. I believe you should all check your
datalinks. If you do, you will see that my client, a Miz
Hypatia Cade, has just this moment purchased a con-
trolling interest in your preferred stock. As of this
moment, Hypatia Cade is Moto-Prosthetics. As her
proxy, she directs me to put the normal business before
the board on hold for a moment."

There was a sudden, shocked moment of silence —
then a rustle as cuffs were pushed back — followed by
another moment of silence as the members of the
board took in the reality of her statement, verified that
it was true, wondered how it had happened without
them noticing, then waited for the axe to fell. All eyes
were on Angelica; some of them desperate. Most of the
desperate were those who backed risky ventures within
the company, and were wondering if their risk-taking
had made them into liabilities for the new majority
owner.

Ah, power. I could disband the entire board and bring in my
own people, and you all know it. These were the moments
that she lived for; the feeling of having the steel hand
within the velvet glove — knowing that she held
immense power, and choosing not to exercise it.

Angelica slid back down into her seat and smiled —

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305

^smoothly, coolly, but encouragingly. "Be at ease, ladies
and gentlemen. The very first thing that my client wishes
to assure you of is that she intends no shakeups. She is
satis fied with the way this company is performing, and she
does notintend to interfere in the way you are runningk."

Once again, the faces around the table changed. Dis-
belief in some eyes, calculation in others. Then
understanding. It would be business as usual. Nothing
would change. These men and women still had their
lives, their power, undisturbed.

She waited for the relief to set in, then pounced,
leaning forward, putting her elbows down in the table,
and steepling her hands before her. "But I must tell
you that this will be the case only so long as Miz Cade is
satisfied. And Miz Cade does have a private agenda for
this company."

Another pause, to let the words sink in. She saw the
questions behind the eyes — what kind of private agen-
da? Was it something that this Cade person wanted them
to do—or to make? Or was it something else altogether?

"It's something that she wants you to construct;
nothing you are not already capable of carrying off,"
Angelica continued, relishing every moment "In fact, I
would venture to say that it is something you could be
doing now, if you had the inclination. It's just a little
personal project, shall we say...."

Alex's mouth tasted like an old rug; his eyes were
scratchy and puffed, and his head pounded. Every
joint ached, his stomach churned unhappily, and he
was not at all enjoying the way the room had a ten-
dency to roll whenever he moved.

The wages of sin were counted out in hangovers,
and this one was one of monumental proportions.

Well, that's what happens when you go on a two-week
drunk.

He closed his eyes, but that didn't help. It hadn't

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exactly been a two-week drunk, but he had never once
in the entire span been precisely sober. He had chosen,
quite successfully, to glaze his problems over with the
fuzz and blurring of alcohol.

It was all that had happened. He had not shaken his
fixation with Tia. He was just as hopelessly in love with
her as he had been before he started his binge. And he
had tried everything short of brain-wipe to get rid of
the emotion; he'd made contact with some of his old
classmates, he'd gone along with Neil and Chria on a
celebratory spree, he'd talked to more bartender-
Counselors, he'd picked up girl after girl...,

To no avail whatsoever.

Tia Cade it was who was lodged so completely in his
mind and heart, and Tia Cade it would remain.

So, besides being hung over, he was still torn up
inside. And without that blur of alcohol to take the edge
offit, his pain was just as bad as before.

There was only one thing for it: he and Tia would
have to work it all out, somehow. One way or another.

He opened his eyes again; his tiny rented cubicle spun
slowly around, and he groaned as has stomach protested.

First things first; deal with the hangover....

It was just past the end of the second shift when he
made his way down the docks to the refit berth where
CenSec had installed Tia for her repair work. It had
taken that long before he felt like a human being again.
One thing was certain; that was not something he
intended to indulge in ever again. One long binge in
his life was enough.

I just hope I haven'tfmd too many brain cells with stupidity.
I don't have any to spare.

He found the lock closed, but there were no more
workers swarming about, either inside the bay or out
That was a good sign, since it probably meant all the
repairs were over. He'd used the day-and-night noise

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307

as an excuse to get away, assuming Tia would contact
him if she needed to.

As he hit the lock controls and gave them his palm to
read, it suddenly occurred to him that she hadn't made
any attempt at all to contact him in all the time he'd
been gone.

Had he frightened her?

Had she reported him?

The lock cycled quickly, and he stepped onto a ship
that was uncannily silent

The lights had been dimmed down; the only sounds
were of the ventilation system. Tia did not greet him;
nothing did. He might as well have been on an empty,
untenanted ship, without even an AI.

Something was wrong.

His heart pounding, his mouth dry with apprehen-
sion, he went to the main cabin. The boards were all
dark, with no signs of activity.

Tia wasn't sulking; Tia didn't sulk. There was noth-
ing functioning that could not be handled by the
stand-alone redundant micros.

He dropped his bag on the deck, from fingers that
had gone suddenly nerveless.

There could be only one cause for this silence, this
absence of activity. Tia was gone.

Either the BB authorities had found out about how
he felt, or Tia herself had complained. They had come
and taken her away, and he would never see or talk to
her again,

As if to confirm his worst fears, a glint of light on an
open plexy window caught his eye. Theodore Edward
Bear was gone, his tiny shrine empty.

No —

But the evidence was inescapable.

Numb with shock, he found himself walking towards
his own cabin. Perhaps there would be a note there, in
his personal database. Perhaps there would be a

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309

message waiting from CS, ordering him to report for
official Counseling.

Perhaps both. It didn't matter. Tia was gone, and
very little mattered anymore.

Black despair washed into him, a despair so deep
that not even tears would relieve it. Tia was gone....

He opened the door to his cabin, and the light from
the corridor shone inside, making the person sitting on
his bunk blink.

Penon sifting on my —

Female. It was definitely female. And she wasn't
wearing anything like a CS uniform, Counselor, Advo-
cate, or anything else. In fact, she wasn't wearing very
much at all — a little neon-red Skandex unitard that
left nothing to imagine.

He turned on the light, an automatic reflex. His
visitor stared up at him, lips creasing in a shy smile. She
was tiny, smaller than he had first thought; dark and
elfin, with big blue eyes, the image of a Victorian fairy

— and oddly familiar.

In her hands, she gently cradled the missing Ted
Bear. It was the bear that suddenly shook his brain out
of inactive and into overdrive.

He stared; he gripped the side of the door. "TTTia?"
he stammered.

She smiled again, with less shyness. "Hi," she said

— and it was Tia's voice, sounding a bit — odd —
coming from a mouth and not a speaker. "I'm sorry I
had to shut so much down, I can't run this and the

ship, too."

It was Tia — Tia! — sitting there in a body, a human
body, like the realization of his dream!

"This?" he replied cleverly.

"I hope you don't mind if I don't get up," she con-
tinued, a little ruefully. "I'm not very good at walking
yet. They just delivered this today, and I haven't had
much practice in it yet."

"It?" he said, sitting heavily down on his bunk and
staring at her. "How—what—"

"Do you like it?" she asked, pathetically eager for his
approval. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to
approve of— the body?

"How could I not like it — you — " His head was
spinning as badly as it had a few hours ago. "Tia, what
on earth is this?"

She blinked, and giggled. "I keep forgetting. You
know all that bonus money we've been getting? I kept
investing it, then reinvesting the profits in Moto-Pros-
thetics. But when we got back here, I was thinking
about something Doctor Kenny told me, that they had
the capability to make a body like this, but that there
was no way to put a naked brain in it, and there was so
much data-transfer needed to run it that the link could
only be done at very short distances."

"Oh." He couldn't help but stare at her; this was his
dream, his daydream—his —

Nevermind.

"Anyway," she continued, blithely unaware that she
had stunned him into complete silence, "it seemed to
me that the body would be perfect for a brainship, I
mean, we've got all the links already, and it wouldn't be
any harder to control a body from inside than a servo.
But he was already an investor, and he told me it wasn't
likely they'd ever build a body like that, since there was
no market for it, because it would cost as much as a
brainship contract buy-out."

"But how —"

She laughed aloud. "That was why I took all my
share of the bonuses and bought more stock! I
bought a controlling interest, then I told them to
build me a body! I don't need a buy-out — I don't
really want a buy-out — not since the Institute
decided to give us the EsKay homeworld assign-
ment."

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AntuMcCaffrey 6? Mercedes Lackey

He shook his head. "That simple? It hardly seems
possible... didn't they argue?"

"They were too happy that I was letting them keep
their old jobs,** she told him cynically. "After all, as con-
trolling stockholder, I had the right to fire them all and
set up my own Board of Directors. But I have to tell
you the funniest thing!"
"What's that?" he asked.

Her hands caressed Theodore's soft fur. "Word of what
I was doing leaked out, and now thereis a market! Did you
have any idea how many shellpersons there are who've
earned a buy-out, but didn't have any place to go with it,
because they were happy with their current jobs?"
He shook his head, dumbly.

"Not too many ships," she told him, "but a lot of
shellpersons running installations. Lots of them. And
there were a lot of inquiries from brainships, too —
some of them saying that they'd be willing to skip a
buy-out to have a body! Moto-Prosthetics even got a
letter of protest from some of the Advocates!"

"Why?" he asked, bewildered. "Why on earth would

they care?"

"They said that we were the tools of the BB program,
that we had purposely put this 'mechanical monster*
together to tempt brainships out of their buy-out
money." She tilted her head to one side, charmingly, and
frowned. "1 must admit that angle had never occurred to
me. I hope that really isn't a problem. Maybe I should
have Lars and Lee Stirling look into it for me."

"Tia," he managed, around the daze surrounding his
thoughts, "whatis this 'mechanical monster* of yours?"

" It's a cybernetic body, with a wide-band comlink in the
extreme shortwave area up here." She tapped her
forehead. "What's different about it is that it's using
shellperson tech to give me full sensory input from the
skin as well as output to the rest. My range isn't much
outside the ship, but my techs at Moto are working on

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311

that After all, when we take the Prime Team out to the
EsKay homeworld, I'm going to want to join the dig, if
they'll let me. What with alloys and silicates and carbon-
fibers and all, it's not much heavier than you are, even
though it outmasses a softperson female of this type by a
few kilos. Everything works, though, full sensory and well
— everything. Like a softperson again, except that I
don't get muscle fatigue and I can shut off the pain-
sensors if I'm damaged. That was why I took Ted out; I
wanted to feel him, to hug him again."

She just sat there and beamed at him, and he shook
his head. "But why?" he asked, finally.

She blinked, and then dropped her eyes to the bear.
"I — probably would have gone for a buy-out, if it
hadn't been for you," she said shyly. "Or maybe a Sin-
gularity Drive, except that CenSec decided that maybe
they'd better give me one and threw it in with the
repairs. But — I told you, Alex. You're the most special
person in my life. How could I know this was possible,
and not do it for—for both of us?"

He dared to touch her then, just one finger along her
cheek, then under her chin, raising her eyes to meet his.
There was nothing about those lucent eyes that looked
mechanical or cold; nothing about the warmth and
resiliency of the skin under his hand thatsaid "cybernetic."

"You gave up your chance of a buy-out for me — for
us?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Someone very wise once said that
the chance for happiness was worth giving up a little
freedom for. And really, between the Advocates and
everybody, they really can't make us do anything we
don't want to."

"I guess not." He smiled, and she smiled back. "You
do realize that you've actually done the BB program
two favors, don't you?"

"I have?" She blinked again, clearly bewildered.

"You've given shellpersons something else to do with

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their buy-out money. If they don't have Singularity
Drives, they'll ward those first — and then they'll want
one of these." He let go of her chin and tapped her
cheek playfully. "Maybe more than one. Maybe one of
each sex, or in different body types. Some brainships
may never buy out. But the other problem — you've
solved fixation, my clever lady."

She nodded after a moment. "I never thought of
that. But you're right! If you have a body, someone to be
with and — ah — everything — you won't endanger
the shellperson. And if it's just an infatuation based on
the dream instead of the reality — well—"

"Well, after a few rounds with the body, it will cool off
to something manageable." He chuckled. "Watch out,
or they'll give you a bonus for that one, too!"

She laughed. "Well, I won't take it as a buy-out! Maybe
I'll just build myself a second body! After all, if we aren't
going to be exploring the universe like a couple of holo-
heroes, we have the time to explore things a little —
closer to hand. Right?"

She posed, coyly, looking at him flirtatiously over her
shoulder. He wondered how many of her entertain-
ment holos she'd watched to find that pose. "So, what
would you like, Alex? A big, blond Valkyrie? An Egyp-
tian queen? A Nubian warrior-maid? How about a
Chinese princess or — "

"Let's learn about what we have at hand, shall we?"
he interrupted, sliding closer to her and taking her in
his arms. Her head tilted up towards his, her eyes shin-
ing with anticipation. Carefully, gently, he took the
bear out of her hands and placed him on the shelf
above the foot of the bed, as her arms slid around his
waist, cautiously, but eagerly.

"Now," he breathed, "about that exploration..."

-End-