He looked back at the tactical, at the sedate dance of death taking place out there.

No; they really didn’t know as much as they thought they did.

“Tell them they have to hold Sleipnir as long as they can,” Roman was saying to Rrin-saa. “At least for another few minutes. Near as we can tell, the space horses are winning out there, but—”

“I’ll be damned.”

Ferrol twisted around. Kennedy’s voice had been little more than a whisper, but there’d been something in her tone… “What is it?” Roman asked.

Kennedy took a deep breath. “I believe the battle’s over, Captain,” she said, the words coming out with—for Kennedy—unusual difficulty. “As good as over, anyway.”

Ferrol glanced back to see Roman frown at his displays. “Explain.”

She nodded toward her displays. “Look at the vultures,” she said quietly. “It’s hard to see—the space horses are blocking most of the view. But you can see enough.”

“I’ll be damned,” Marlowe echoed. “She’s right, sir. The vultures have grouped into optical nets again… in front of the sharks.”

“They’ve switched sides,” Kennedy said, shaking her head in obvious wonderment.

“Seen which way the battle was going, and decided en masse to join with the winners.”

On a hunch, Ferrol keyed for a forward visual scan. “Our optical net’s gone, too, Captain,” he told Roman. “The vultures are…” He paused, searching.

“They’re heading for the battle,” Marlowe put in.

“Interesting, indeed,” Roman said thoughtfully. For a moment he stared at his displays… and then, as Ferrol watched, a tight smile tugged at his lips. Reaching over, he keyed his intercom. “Rrin-saa?”

“I hear, Rro-maa. We cannot hold Sleipnninni for much longer—”

“No need,” Roman cut him off. “Tell Sso-ngu he can let Sleipnir go any time now, only to try and hold it down to a couple of gees.”

“Your wishes are ours.”

Roman keyed off the intercom; and as he did so the Amity abruptly lurched forward. Ferrol fought his stomach, and a moment later Sleipnir had settled down to a steady three gee acceleration. “I hope you’ve timed this right,” he told Roman as the brief nausea faded away. “I really don’t think we want to get there while the fight’s still going on.”

“I don’t think that’ll be a problem,” Roman said. “I expect the sharks will have been beaten too far down to bother us by the time we arrive. And actually, it’ll probably be better to get there a little early than to be too late.”

Ferrol frowned at him. “Too late for what?”

“You’ll see. Give the Scapa Flow a call; tell them to rendezvous with us at the nearest shark as soon as they’re all dead.” He gazed thoughtfully at the display. “If I’m right, we all have a lot of work ahead of us.”

Chapter 30

“They’re late.”

Roman turned from his contemplation of the viewport and the scene outside it, and took a long look at Ferrol. Seated in the far corner of his office, as far from the desk and two guest chairs as possible, the other’s face and body language were alive with low-level tension. “They’ll be here,” Roman assured him. “Being late is one of those qualities that make Tampies so darn endearing.”

Ferrol snorted; but his tension seemed to ease a bit. “Right,” he said dryly.

Roman studied him. “You sure you don’t want a filter mask? Even with the air system going full blast some of their odors are going to get through.”

Ferrol took a deep breath, as if trying to get all the air he could while it was still clean. “Thank you, but no,” he said, glancing at the door. “I’m going to need to reprogram my reactions eventually, and this seems as good a time as any to start.”

“All right.” Roman cocked an eyebrow. “But no hitting then,” he warned.

Ferrol flushed. Apparently, he’d forgotten that little incident, so long ago, in Amity’s hangar. “No hitting, sir,” he promised.

The door buzzed. “Here they are,” Roman said; and the panel slid open to reveal Rrin-saa and Sso-ngu, their twisted faces almost hidden behind their filter masks.

“Come in,” he invited them, gesturing to the two guest chairs facing him. “Please; sit down.”

“We hear,” Rrin-saa said, leading the way into the office.

The door slid shut behind them, and as they settled themselves in the chairs Roman threw a glance at Ferrol. Still tense, but clearly under solid control. He would be all right, Roman decided. “So,” he said, turning his attention back to the Tampies.

“Dr. Tenzing tells me his people have done about all the work on the dead sharks that they can for the moment, so we’ll be ready to leave Kialinninni soon. I was hoping that you might have changed your mind about ending Amity’s charter once we’ve returned to the Cordonale.”

“We cannot,” Rrin-saa said. “We were lied to, Rro-maa. Lied into taking part in an unneedful killing. I have stated the Amity experiment is over, and I must maintain that stating.”

Roman nodded. “I understand,” he said. “Certainly, consistency is an important part of policy decisions. I just thought that, given that we now know exactly why Amity’s space horse breeding program worked, the basis for that decision might have changed.”

Rrin-saa’s head tilted briefly to the side. “We do not know why the breeding was successful,” he said, a note of firmness to his voice. “We know the presence of humans was necessary; that is all.”

So the Tampy was determined not to give a single millimeter on this. Not that Roman had really expected him to; in their own sedate way, the Tampies could be just as mule-headed as humans. “Well, then,” he told the other, “allow me to explain it to you. It worked because human beings, as you’re so fond of pointing out, are predators… and because an accelerated breeding cycle is how space horses respond to the presence of predators.”

“That is not yet proved,” Rrin-saa said.

“Perhaps not to Tampy standards of proof,” Roman countered, “but all the indications are there, and for us those indications are quite adequate. When two hundred space horses are not only willing but actually eager to attack a half dozen of their worst enemies, it’s pretty clear that their ecological pattern of defense is to fight back with sheer brute-force weight of numbers. And there’s only one way to get brute-force numbers.”

Rrin-saa hesitated, then touched fingers to ear. “You may be correct,” he allowed.

“You know I am,” Roman said. “Whether you’ll admit it or not. And that should be disturbing to you… because of all the aspects and patterns of nature which you’ve thought you understood, space horses have always been right up there near the top.”

“We do not claim all knowledge, Rro-maa,” Rrin-saa said. “We observe; we learn; we understand. Some understandings come swiftly, others only over centuries of study. The Tamplissta will ponder what we have observed, and will learn from it.”

“Good.” Roman flicked his gaze to Sso-ngu, back to Rrin-saa. “Then ponder this, as well, when you settle down to pondering things. You were wrong about space horses; I submit to you that you’ve been wrong about humanity, as well.”

Rrin-saa gazed back unblinkingly, his head tilting again to the side. “We do not yet understand you fully, Rro-maa. Yet, we understand you better than you perhaps know.”

Roman shook his head. “No,” he said. “You think you do, but you really don’t.

You’ve gotten it into your heads that we’re nothing more or less than tall, misshapen Tampies who can’t or won’t see the patterns of nature around us and who you’re determined to raise to your level of sensitivity even if it kills us.

You’ve held that picture for twenty years now, and refuse to let it go.”

“You are sentient creatures, Rro-maa,” Rrin-saa said. “You have power over the balances of nature, and thus have responsibilities toward them.”