Roman could sit down there in his office all day sifting through the final crewer questionnaires if he wanted to, but there was no way in hell that the results could add up to anything other than total failure. He knew it, Roman knew it, and anyone who’d been paying any attention at all to the ship’s atmosphere these past few weeks knew it.
Ahead, the bridge displays flickered in unison as Delta system’s orange sun vanished and was replaced by the yellow dwarf of Solomon system. “Jump completed,” MacKaig announced. “Range to Solomon… 3.5 million kilometers.”
Ferrol did a quick calculation. About eleven hours round trip at the 0.9 gee the Tampies seemed to prefer. “Inform Solomon that we’ve arrived, Ensign,” he told her, “and have the Handler take us in. The usual 0.9 gee ace/dec profile will do.”
“Aye, sir.”
And with this little side trip finally over, it would be time to get back to the Scapa Flow and pick up where he’d left off. Assuming, of course, the Starforce patrols in the Tampies’ yishyar system had faded away… and assuming the Senator let him go back.
Ferrol grimaced at the memory. The Senator had made no secret of the fact that he hadn’t liked the way Ferrol had handled his ship’s near-capture by Roman and the Dryden, and had gone so far as to suggest that Ferrol was getting too reckless. The discussion had been tabled by the whole Amity thing, but now that that was over it was bound to be rekindled. And if he couldn’t convince the Senator that he was still trustworthy—
“Commander?” MacKaig spoke up, her voice suddenly tight. “Solomon reports a tachyon message waiting for us—Level One Urgent.”
War. The word came unbidden to Ferrol’s thoughts, and for a split second his blood seemed to freeze. The war had come, and he was trapped on a Tampycrewed ship… “Sound yellow alert,” he ordered, fighting down the tremor in his voice. “I’ll get the captain.”
And as the alert warble sounded, and he fumbled with his intercom, the word again ran through his mind.
War.
Chapter 8
“… Although I feel the experience was worthwhile, I don’t think I would enjoy working with the Tampies again. There are just too many differences, too many ways for us to irritate each other.”
The words flowing across the display ceased, and Roman braced himself. That was the last of them. Now came the moment he’d been dreading: the computer’s scorecard. Tapping the appropriate key, he watched as the results appeared. Twentyeight favorable, ninety-seven unfavorable, as compared to an original pre-flight score of sixty to sixty-five. Nearly twenty-six percent of Amity’s crew had switched from pro- to anti-Tampy.
Damn.
He leaned back in his chair, gazing out at the shadowy bulk of Pegasus just visible at the edge of the viewport. So it had failed, this grand experiment in familiarity breeding respect—failed beyond the ability of even the most grimly optimistic to argue. Virtually all of the originally pro-Tampy crewers had had their enthusiasm toward the aliens dampened, to one degree or another, while at the same time every single one of the anti-Tampies had had their prejudices strengthened.
I should have taken firmer control, he told himself; but deep down he knew it wouldn’t have made any difference. There was no way he could have forced friendship between the races on his ship, and it would have been useless to even try. Rrin-saa’s words about Amity’s importance echoed in his mind, and for a moment he felt a brief stirring of anger toward the Tampies. Certainly some of the blame rested with them—they hadn’t made the slightest effort to tone down their opposition to the way human beings interacted with the rest of the universe. In fact, they’d more than once gone borderline hysterical about it.
He was still staring blackly at the final data when the office was abruptly filled with the soft but pervasive warbling of ship’s alert.
For a pair of heartbeats he just sat there, mind wrenching away from interstellar politics and back to his immediate responsibilities. He reached for his intercom; but it came on even before his hand got there. “Captain here,” he said.
“Bridge, sir,” Ferrol said, his face and voice tight. “We’ve got a tachyon message coming in from Solomon—Urgent One level.”
A chill ran up Roman’s back. There was only one reason he could think of why anyone would need to shoot Amity a message of such priority… “Acknowledged,”
he said, keying the proper acceptance code into his terminal. “Bring it in,” he instructed Ferrol. “Pipe it back here to me and to the bridge crew—nowhere else.”
For an instant his eyes and Ferrol’s met, and there was a brief spark of mutual understanding. If the simmering fires on the human-Tampy frontier had indeed exploded into full conflict, both men wanted some time to think before breaking the news to Amity’s Tampies. “Yes, sir,” Ferrol said, dropping his gaze to his keys.
“Here it comes.”
Ferrol’s face disappeared from the screen, to be replaced by—
TO RESEARCH SHIP AMITY, SOLOMON: FROM COMMANDER STARFORCE BORDERSHIPS
EXTENSION, PREPYAT:
:::URGENT-ONE:::URGENT-ONE:::URGENT-ONE::: PROCEED IMMEDIATELY NCL1148, EMERGENCY RESCUE OF
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH STATION ON THIRD PLANET. NCL 1148-B
PREPARING TO GO NOVA.
“Holy hell,” someone on the bridge muttered in the background.
“Quiet,” Ferrol’s voice growled back.
FURTHER DATA ON SYSTEM AVAILABLE FOR FEED FROM SOLOMON
STARFORCE STATION. ABSOLUTELY VITAL PICKUP BE MADE BY
AM77T.
VICE-ADMIRAL MARCOSA, COMBOREX, PREPYAT CODE/VER
*@7882//53
8:22 GMT///ESD 3 APRIL 2335
“Commander, contact the station and get us that data feed,” Roman ordered, feeling the knots in his stomach begin to relax a bit. Heading into a system on the brink of stellar explosion was hardly cause for joy, but it was a far cry from the call to arms he’d envisioned. “And alert the Tampies; I want Pegasus ready to Jump just as soon as we know where it is we’re Jumping to.”
“Yes, sir,” Ferrol said, his voice still tight. “Shall I secure from yellow alert?”
“Yes, you’d better,” Roman agreed. The warbling siren had probably driven most of the crewers to the same conclusion that he and Ferrol had already jumped to, and things were likely pretty tense back there. “Go ahead and read the message over the general intercom, too—if the star is really this close to going critical, we’re going to want everyone running at top efficiency.”
“Acknowledged.”
Roman keyed off the intercom and unstrapped, and as his feet found the nearest velgrip patch the warbling faded and was replaced by Ferrol’s voice announcing the sudden change in Amity’s planned schedule.
And for a moment Roman paused beside his desk, frowning at the stars outside.
8:22 GMT, the message datestamp had said, on Earth Standard Date 3 April 2335.
Something over thirty hours ago… and in the time the message had sat around waiting for the Amity to make its appearance at Solomon, Marcosa could have sent the message to the Tampies via a space horse-equipped courier and had a rescue ship already in the 1148 system, possibly even at the research station itself.
So why hadn’t they?
Politics, he thought darkly. Politics and pride, and a hell/highwater unwillingness to ask the Tampies for help. Damn foolishness, by any reasonable standard; and if the survey team lost their lives because of it—
It would be Amity that would get the blame.
Ferrol had skimmed through the entire data feed, distributed the appropriate sections to the appropriate people, and had started a more careful reading when Roman finally arrived. “The team consists of roughly fifty people, under the direction of Dr. Jamen Lowry of Cambridge,” he told the captain as the latter floated to his command chair and strapped in. “They set up there because the star was thought to be in a pre-nova stage and they wanted to study it. Apparently, the thing’s going off sooner than theory predicted.”