Kennedy looked at Ferrol. “I think,” she said dryly, “we’ve just made a brand new discovery about space horses. Isn’t science wonderful?”
“Just terrific,” he agreed. “How about it, Sso-ngu?” he asked, turning to face Demothi and the Tampies. “You want to tell me why Man o’ War would suddenly spook and Jump when Quentin was the one who was scared?”
Demothi frowned. “What makes you think he would know—?”
Ferrol silenced him with a look. “Sso-ngu?”
“I do not know,” Sso-gnu replied. “I know that sometimes emotions can be communicated between nearby space horses; that is all.”
“Telepathy?”
Sso-ngu gave the short fingers-to-ear gesture that was the Tampy shrug. “What is telepathy?”
Kennedy chuckled. “Telepathy: any method of communication we don’t yet understand.”
Ferrol snorted; but she was right. And anyway, the method hardly mattered at this point. “All right, then, try this one,” he said to Sso-ngu. “Assuming Quentin’s panic was somehow transmitted to Man o’ War, why did Man o’ War Jump instead of coming to Quentin’s aid?”
“You’re anthropomorphizing,” Demothi said stiffly. “You can’t expect a space horse to act like a human mother.”
“Mmo-thee is correct,” Sso-ngu said. “Perhaps Manawanninni heard only the calf’s fear and Jumped as the calf wished to do.” His face twisted even more than usual.
“Humans do not understand such complete sharing of feelings.”
“No, I think the noble Tampy empathy is probably beyond us,” Ferrol grunted.
Something on Kennedy’s board beeped. “Is that the Amity?” he asked, turning to scan his own displays.
Kennedy shook her head. “No—one of the outrider boats has found us with a comm laser. Basically repeating the captain’s message.”
Ferrol hadn’t thought about the fact that the three outriders would have been left behind, too. “Might as well head back to join them,” he told her. “Figure a course for Wwis-khaa to follow—I’ll get our laser set up and tell them we’re on our way.”
“Assuming Wwis-khaa can get Quentin to obey,” Kennedy reminded him.
Ferrol glanced at the Tampy, noted the glowing rows of tiny green lights on the helmet. “I think anyone who can manage a wild space horse should have no problems with Quentin,” he assured her. He turned back—
“But Wwis-khaa won’t be Handling Quentin,” Demothi said. “I will be.”
Slowly, deliberately, Ferrol turned back again. Demothi had drawn himself up to his full height, an affectation which looked even more ridiculous while strapped into a lander seat than it had when standing upright in the captain’s office. “What was that?” he asked mildly.
“I said I’ll be Handling the calf,” Demothi repeated. “My orders from the Senate and the Admiralty—”
“You had your chance,” Ferrol cut him off, a flash of anger boiling through him.
With all that had happened since Quentin bolted, he’d almost forgotten that Demothi’s failure to control the calf was the end of a dream. The end of his dream… “You had your chance, and it’s over.”
“It wasn’t a fair trial.” Demothi’s usual passive expression had vanished, replaced by an odd combination of determination and pleading. “It was a new experience, both for me and for Quentin, and neither of us had a chance to adjust. I’ve been thinking it through, and I believe I know what I did wrong.” He took a deep breath.
“Please, Commander. Just one more chance.”
“In twenty-four hours or so,” Kennedy murmured, “Quentin’ll be fully capable of Jumping.”
Ferrol looked sharply at her, the Senator’s veiled warnings about her flooding back.
She looked back at him, nothing but mild questioning on her face…
And she did, unfortunately, have a damn good point. If Demothi was ever to have a second chance, it had to be while the calf was still too young to Jump. “All right,”
he ground out, giving an extra tightening tug on his harness. “One more chance, and that’s it. Wwis-khaa, give him the helmet. Demothi, you concentrate on setting up a stable contact before you try anything fancy like moving—and if you feel Quentin panicking you take the helmet off damn quick. Got that?”
“Yes.” Demothi gave him a lopsided smile. “I won’t fail.”
Right, Ferrol thought sourly. Demothi accepted the helmet from Wwis-khaa and slid it over his head. The indicator lights blinked uncertainly, each flicking between red, orange, and green several times before finally settling down to green. The lander rocked gently once, but nothing worse happened; and as the lights continued their progression Ferrol had the eerie sense of watching history in the making.
Demothi was going to make it… and then Ferrol dropped his eyes a fraction and focused on Demothi’s face.
The man looked like he was going to, explode.
“Sso-ngu!” Ferrol shouted… but he was too late. With another spine-wrenching tug the lander pulled sharply to the left. Ferrol’s eyes came back to focus to find Ssongu reaching for the helmet, pulling against the lander’s acceleration to try and get it off Demothi’s head. The maneuvering jets kicked in again, and as they did so another lurch twisted the lander around, throwing Ferrol’s head to face the side viewport and the dim red star visible there.
He was still facing that direction when the star vanished.
Chapter 16
Quentin subsided, and the maneuvering jets cut off, and for a long minute the lander was silent. A hundred curses chased each other through Ferrol’s mind, none of them strong enough to adequately cover the impossibility that had just happened. Ahead, the edge of a brilliant blue-white star blazed painfully at them around Quentin’s bulk; slowly, Ferrol turned from it to focus on Kennedy’s profile.
Perhaps sensing his movement, she turned to face him, and for a moment they just gazed at each other in silence. Apparently, a small section of Ferrol’s mind decided, Kennedy’s repertoire of curses didn’t cover this situation, either.
“Well,” he said to her at last, “shall we see what we’ve got here?”
She took a deep breath. “Right. Okay.” Slowly, as if still half paralyzed by the shock of it, her fingers began to move across her keys. Ferrol watched them a moment, then turned around.
The two Tampies were sitting quietly, the helmet on Sso-ngu‘s head showing all green. Between them, Demothi had the expression over his filter mask of a small child who has insisted on carrying the family heirloom crystal and then dropped it.
“We’ll dispense with any spilled-milk recriminations for now,” Ferrol said, fighting to keep his voice calm and controlled. “Wwis-khaa, I want to know how Quentin managed that Jump.”
“I do not know—”
“Yes, you do,” Ferrol cut him off harshly. “You know, or at least have a good idea.
What is it, that space horse calves can Jump at birth, but just can’t see well enough to lock onto a target star?”
Wwis-khaa tilted his head. “It is possible.”
“But it is only a thought,” Sso-ngu cautioned. “The Tamplissta do not know for certain.”
“I’ll settle for good half-assed theories at this point,” Ferrol countered. “So. How well could Quentin see? Wwis-khaa?”
The Tampy hesitated. “I do not believe he could see very well,” he said at last, mouthing the speculation with obvious reluctance.
Ferrol carefully unclenched his teeth. “Look,” he said, fighting hard against a sudden urge to wrap his fingers around someone’s neck. “I understand how you hate to repeat anything you don’t personally know to be a fact. But try and get it through your heads that we are lost; and the only way we’re going to find our way back is if we have some answers.”
Silence. “Demothi, keep working on them,” Ferrol growled, the rage turning into disgust. “Do something useful for a change.” Turning away, he focused on Kennedy. “Got anything yet?”