“Yeah,” Roman grunted, annoyed despite the fact he’d half expected that answer.

One of the more maddening Tampy characteristics was their steadfast and muleheaded refusal to ever speculate aloud unless and until they had absolute proof one way or the other. Pressing Sso-ngu on the subject would do nothing but pull increasingly obscure facts about space horses from him; and while that might be a useful exercise some day, at the moment Roman couldn’t be bothered. “Well, then, just stand by,” he told the Tampy. “We’ll have the location in a few minutes and feed the direction back there. Until then, you might as well have Pegasus stop our acceleration.”

“Your wishes are ours.”

Roman frowned at the screen, wondering if the Tampy was being sarcastic. But that was hardly likely. “Very good. Execute.”

He broke the connection; and an instant later grabbed reflexively at the arms of his chair as the Amity made a stomach-lurching transition to zero-gee.

Belatedly, the deceleration warning went on, and Roman swore under his breath.

Textbook fusion-drive deceleration/cool-down was a five-minute process; once again, old reflexes had betrayed him.

“Captain?” Ferrol cut into his embarrassment. The other’s voice was bland enough… but as Roman turned to face him he could see that the exec was privately enjoying his discomfiture. “Survey section reports they’ve taken the next dust sweat sample,” Ferrol continued. He cocked an eyebrow. “Assuming, that is, you still want them to bother analyzing the stuff.”

Roman eyed him. “Have you received any orders to the contrary, Commander?” he asked mildly.

The skin around Ferrol’s eyes tightened a bit. Perhaps, Roman thought, he’d been hoping for an overreaction. “No, sir,” he said, matching Roman’s tone.

“Then I’d say you could safely assume I still want the dust analyzed. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yes, sir,” Ferrol said, the first stirrings of awkwardness starting to appear at the corners of his lips. He was now on the defensive, and didn’t like it a bit. “I just thought the order might be worth checking on, after the negative results of the first sample.”

For a moment Roman just looked at him, watching the discomfort grow. “This is a research ship, Commander,” he said at last. “Its mission is to collect data; on Tampies, Tampy-human interactions, unexplored planets, space horse travel, and space horses themselves. All data, whether it looks to be immediately useful or not.”

“Understood, sir,” Ferrol said, his discomfort starting to edge into a simmering of anger.

“Good,” Roman nodded. He held the eye contact a second longer, then turned back to Marlowe. “Progress on the search for Alpha, Lieutenant?” he asked.

“Another minute, Captain,” the other said promptly, his voice the cadet-precise monotone of someone trying hard to keep himself inconspicuous. “We’ve got the theoretical position calculated, and we’re searching that immediate area with the scopes.”

Roman nodded and keyed his own displays to monitor the search. Thus are drawn the battle lines, he thought darkly. Ferrol had no real reason to care whether or not the survey section was wasting its time with Pegasus’ dust sweat, and he and everyone on the bridge knew it. The question had been nothing less than a challenge to Roman’s command authority, or his judgment, or both.

Or in other words, despite all of his high-sounding statements the previous day, Ferrol wasn’t going to be content with simply letting Amity’s crew make up their own minds about the Tampies on merit alone. He was going to make this into a personal confrontation between himself, the anti-Tampy realist, and Roman, the pro-Tampy military/political hack.

And if Marlowe’s reaction was anything to go by, Ferrol had at the very least managed to sour the atmosphere on the bridge a bit. A subtle but genuine form of damage.

“Got it, Captain,” Kennedy announced. “Bearing 96.4, 15.3. Distance, six hundred thousand kilometers.”

“Send the direction to the Tampies,” Roman told her. “Straight-line path, once we’ve come around, and have Sso-ngu keep acceleration at 0.9 gee.”

He would have thought Ferrol would be willing to quit while he was ahead. He was wrong. “Shall I compute turnover point for them, sir?” the other spoke up. “Their excuse for a computer may not be able to handle the calculation.”

“Let’s find out, shall we?” Roman countered. “Lieutenant, just give Sso-ngu the location and let the Tampies do the rest.” He cocked an eyebrow to Ferrol. “If they can, that is.”

They could, and did… and just under five hours later Pegasus eased the Amity smoothly into geosynchronous orbit around Alpha.

If Ferrol had won the first round of his private duel, the Tampies had clearly won the second.

Roman had seen a fair number of planetary landscapes over the years, either in person or in holos, and he’d found that in almost every case his first impression was of the wild and exotic color combinations alien plant life always seemed able to come up with.

It was a rule that Alpha had proved a glaring exception to. The wide prairielike field the landing party was busy poking around, as well as the forest beyond it, were done entirely in black, white, and shades of gray.

“It’s really rather amazing,” Ells Sanderson commented, and even through the muffling of his filter mask there was no mistaking the excitement in his voice.

“The predominant black-and-gray plant coloration makes considerable sense as far as photosynthesis goes—allows more energy to be collected, including more of the infrared than straight chlorophyll-variants can utilize.”

“Pretty dull as far as looking goes, though,” Roman commented. “Are all the animals and insects naturally color-blind?”

“It’s one of the things we’ll be checking,” Sanderson said. “Though you bring up an interesting point: namely, how pollination takes place without brightly colored flowers to attract the insects.”

“Maybe it’s not done by insects at all,” Roman suggested. “Couldn’t the pollen be airborne, or transmitted by animals that brush by?”

“The anthers of most of these plants are wrong for that,” one of the other scientists put in. Steef Burch, Roman tentatively identified the voice. “Besides which, I can see various insects doing flight patterns through and around clumps of specific plant types.”

“We’re taking some proximity air samples,” Sanderson added. “That should tell us if the flowers are putting out chemical cues.”

“Sounds good.” Roman scanned the multi-split screen that showed all of the lander’s fixed cameras and the landing party’s portable ones, chose one of the two that showed the analysis table that had been set up a dozen meters from the lander’s air lock. He keyed for it, and Sanderson’s close-up of dull gray foliage was replaced by a close-up of a small gray-brown creature that looked like a nightmare blend of aardvark face, turtle shell, short monkey legs, and lobster claws, the whole thing strapped to the table by a covering of mesh net. “Dr. Peyton? How are the animal studies going?”

“Ttra-mu and I are doing just fine,” Miki Peyton said in the vaguely distant voice of someone absorbed in her work. Peyton’s file had put her as marginally anti- Tampy, a fact that had worried Roman more than once as the lander was heading down. The Tampies would be watching this part of the work closely, making sure there was nothing that could be construed as mistreatment, and the last thing Roman wanted was someone who might go all twitchy under the aliens’ lopsided gaze. But Peyton had been the head of the group who’d designed and built this particular analysis table, and she’d made it more than clear that she personally was going to be there for her pet project’s official debut. The risk of friction down on Alpha hadn’t been worth risking civil war on the Amity for, and Roman had reluctantly given in.