And every time a job was finished, they called for old Suessi. Check it for us, Hannes, they'd ask. Make sure we've done it right.

They tried so damned hard. They couldn't help feeling like half-finished clients of wolfling patrons in an impossibly hostile galaxy, especially when it was all true.

Suessi admitted he was bitching more to hear the echoes in his own skull than out of any real complaint. The Streakers had done the job; that was all that really mattered. He was proud of every one of them.

Anyway, it had been a lot better since Hikahi arrived. She provided an example for the rest, teasing with Keneenk parables, to help the fen concentrate.

Suessi rolled over onto one elbow. His narrow bunk was only a meter below the ceiling. Inches from his shoulder was the horizontal hatch to his coin-like sleeper compartment.

I've rested enough, he thought, though his eyes were scratchy and his arms still ached. There was no sense in trying to go back to sleep. He would only stare at his eyelids now.

Suessi pushed the narrow hatch open. He shielded his eyes from the overhead lights of the companionway as he sat up and swung his legs over the side. They splashed.

Ugh. Water. Except for the top meter or so, up here near the ceiling, the skiff was full of water.

His body looked pale in the sharp hall light. I wonder when I'm scheduled to fade away, he thought, sliding into the water with his eyes closed. He swam over to the head and closed the door behind him.

Naturally, he had to wait until the room pumped out before he could use any of the fixtures.

A little later, he made his way to the control room of the tiny spacecraft. Hikahi was there with Tsh't, fussing over the comm set. They argued in a fast, squeaky version of Anglic he couldn't follow.

"Whoa!" he called. "If you want to keep me out, fine. But if I can help, you'd better change to thirty-three and a third. I'm not Tom Orley. I can't follow that jabber!"

The two dolphin officers lifted their heads clear of the water as Suessi took a grip on a nearby wall rail. Hikahi's eyes extended outward to refocus for above-water binocular vision.

"We aren't sure we have a problem, Hannesss, but we seem to have lost contact with the ship."

"With Streaker?" Suessi's bushy eyebrows went up. Are they under attack?"

Tsh't rocked her upper body left to right slightly. "We don't think so. I was here, waiting for word that they'd heard from Orley, and would be moving the ship soon. I wasn't paying close attention, but heard the operator suddenly tell us to 'stand by'… then nothing!"

"When was this?"

"A few hours ago. I waited until shift mange, hoping it was a technical glitch at the ship, then I called Hikahi."

"We've been tracing circuits since then," the senior officer finished.

Suessi swam over to look at the set. Of course, the thing to do was tear it apart and check it by hand. But the electronics were sealed away against the wetness.

If only we were in free fall so the fins could work without all this damned water everywhere.

"All right," he sighed. "With your permission, Hikahi, I'll kick you two officers and gentlefems out of the control room and look at the unit. Don't bother the fen resting in the hold."

Hikahi nodded. "I'll send a crew to follow the monofilament and see if it's intact."

"Good thinking. And don't worry. I'm sure nothing's really the matter. It's probably just gremlins at work."

38 ::: Charles Dart

"I'm afraid they've only taken the damned robot down another eighty meters. That kid Toshio will only work on it for a few hours, then he's always got to be off helping Dennie and Gillian run their new clients through mazes, or having them knock down bananas with poles or something. I tell you it's frustrating! The rotten little half-wrecked probe's carrying mostly the wrong kinds of instruments for geological work. Can you imagine how bad it will be when we get it down to a decent depth?"

The holographic image of the metallurgist Brookida seemed to look past Charles Dart for a moment. Apparently, the dolphin scientist was referring to his own displays. Each eye was covered with a goggle lens to correct for astigmatism when reading. He turned back to look at his chimp colleague.

"Charlie. You talk so assuredly about sending thisss robot deeper into Kithrup's crust. You complain that it has gone down 'only' five hundred meters. Are you cognizant that that-t is half a kilometer?"

Charlie scratched his fuzzy jaw. "Yeah? So what? The excavation has got so little taper that it might easily drop down as much farther as it's already gone. It's a wonderful mineralogical lab! Already I'm finding out a lot about the subsurface zone!"

Brookida sighed. "Charlie, aren't you curious as to why the cavern under Toshio's island goes down even one hundred metersss?"

"Hmmm? What do you mean?"

"I mean that the so-called 'drill-tree' that'ss responsible for this excavation cannot have dug so deep merely in search of carbon and silicate nutrients. It can't-t have…"

"How would you know? Are you an ecologist?" Charlie rapped out a sharp laugh. "Honestly Brookida, what do you base these suppositions on? Sometimes you surprise me!"

Brookida waited patiently for the chimpanzee to finish laughing. "I base them on a well-informed layman's knowledge of basic lawsss of nature, and upon Occam's Razor. Think of the volume of material removed! Has it been scattered upon the watersss? Has it occurred to you that there are tens of thousands of these metal-mounds along this plate boundary, most with their own drill-trees… and that there may have been millions of such deep excavations dug in recent geologic time?"

Dart started to snigger, then he stopped. He stared for a moment at the image of his cetacean colleague, then laughed in earnest. He pounded the desk.

"Touche! All right, sir! We'll add 'Why these holes?' to our list of questions! Fortunately I've been cultivating an ecologist lab-mate for the last few months. I've done her innumerable favors, and it happens she's at the site of our quandary! I'll ask Dennie to get to work on it right away! Rest assured, we'll know soon enough what these drill-trees are up to!"

Brookida didn't bother answering. He did let out a small sigh.

"Now that that's settled," Charlie went on, "let's get back to the really important stuff: Can you help persuade the captain to let me go out there in person and take a real deep-probe robot with me to replace that lousy little thing Toshio salvaged?"

Brookida's eyes widened. He hesitated.

"The c-captain remains unconscious," Brookida said at last. "Makanee has twice performed surgery. According to the latest reports, the outlook remains bleak-k."

The chimp stared for a long moment. "Oh, yeah. I forgot." Charlie looked away from the holo display. "Well, then maybe Takkata-Jim will be willing. After all, the longboat's not being used. I'll ask Metz to talk to him. Will you help?"

Brookida's eyes were sunken. "I'll study these mass spectrometer data," he answered evenly. "I will call you when I have results. Now I mussst sign off, Charles Dart."

The image dissolved. Charlie was alone again.

Brookida was awfully abrupt there, he thought. Have I offended him somehow?

Charlie knew he was offensive to people. He couldn't help it. Even other chimpanzees thought him abrasive and self-centered. They said neo-chimps like him gave the race a bad rep.

Well, I've tried, he thought. And when a person's tried and failed so often, when his best attempts at gallantry turn to faux pas, and he constantly finds himself forgetting other people's names well then, maybe a guy should give up. Other people don't always win awards for kindness to me, either.