Nimisha's Ship

CHAPTER 4

Lady Nimisha?" said a familiar voice as the fog of sleep lifted from her mind. The medical couch was open and not so much as a whiff of the sleep gas remained.

"A full standard year has passed, ma'am," added Helm's tenor voice.

"And no response?"

"No, ma'am."

She felt the coolness of hyposprays penetrating both arms.

"Sit up slowly, Nimi, but I think you'll find you're in excellent shape after that nice long nap," Doc said.

"May I fix you something to eat, Lady Nimisha?" Cater asked.

Nimisha's stomach rumbled.

"Indeed you may," she said, following Doc's advice about movement. She was stiff with disuse. "Helm, plot a course to the nearest of the primaries with an M-type planet. I'm tired of hanging about in space. Let's see what mischief we can get into out there."

"I am programmed to remind you, Lady Nimisha," Helm said, sounding as close to repressive as the AI could get, "that we are constrained to avoid contact with emerging species. It is against FSP policy to interfere with normal evolution when the indigenous population has reached either toolmaking or settled agricultural base level."

"That is, if there is an indigenous and sapient population," she said with a grin.

"Yes, ma'am," was Helm's not at all contrite response.

Nimisha smiled as she collected the usual post-sleep liquid meal.

"This at least tastes appetising, Cater. Thanks," she said after the first tentative sip. The gruel for the revived that was offered on naval ships was so bland it was difficult to swallow. That was another of her little improvements for long-distance travelling: savoury comestibles.

"And, Helm," she added, "leave an update on that beacon to indicate our new destination."

"Already programmed, ma'am."

She shrugged. She really was almost superfluous.

"Estimated arrival time?" she asked.

"At Interstellar Speed Three, we will reach the heliopause in two days."

"So be it, Helm. We will decelerate and record all data on our way into the third planet. It is the third planet, isn't it?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Standard almost, isn't it?" she murmured.

"Yes, ma'am."

Nimisha made a facial grimace. Oh, well, "yes" was more encouraging than another spate of "no's" from Helm.

She felt the thrum through the deck plates as the Fiver moved forward, gradually increasing speed sufficient to enter IS drive. She watched the stars in the view screen begin to blur, counted down to herself to the translation into the IS speed mode, and braced herself just as the Fiver slid forward. She had become inured to the insertion nausea but was still pleased when it passed as they settled into warp drive.

"Report on insertion and performance, please?" After all, this was still a trial run.

"All systems functioning at normal levels and efficiency."

That was certainly as it should be.

She opened her log and made the necessary entry. Helm would have kept the ship's log updated on a daily basis; she would have to update hers.

The fact that she now had a destination made all the difference to her morale. She felt alive, keen, wondering just what this world would be like. Of course, if there were any signs of civilisation, she'd have to veer off. She could almost wish there were a society of some sort to visit. As the first Emissary of Federated Sentient Planets.

Damn. Had she put the universal translator on board? Yes, she must have. She remembered having Hiska install the unit. The woman had given her a shocked and surprised look. But she'd done it.

"Helm, is the universal translator activated?"

"Yes, ma'am. Shall I put it online?"

"No, but I'm glad it's there."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Always prepared for the unexpected, aren't you, Nimi?" Doc commented.

She gave him an ironic laugh. "Except for a wormhole, Doc."

"Well, yes, but you had cleared your course with the Fleet, and they had no records of a phenomenon in that sector, had they?"

"No, they didn't. It's mostly used for their navy manoeuvres and testing since it's rather barren of stars and planets."

"Is that so?"

"It is!"

She was certain that there had been intensive searches for her while she had slept. Caleb Rustin, not to mention her mother and Cuiva, would never give up until they either heard the ship's death knell or found her. That was comforting, but she did want to make it back before Cuiva was Necklaced. She looked forward to that day: She'd be able to take her daughter more fully into her confidence and to examine Cuiva's natural aptitudes. No reason for the girl to be one of those gilded-or misshapen for fashion-dilettantes. Useless creatures. Her mother might have been traditional in every aspect of social behaviour and a devil for propriety, but she had never been vapid, stupid, or shallow. Boynton women had always been achievers.

The system, which Nimisha whimsically named Primero, adding its coordinates within the present sphere of the galaxy, was so close to "normal" that it was exactly what any exploration team would give all left arms to encounter. There were ten planets, the coldest, outermost few were frozen; then there was another giant, and while there was no asteroid belt between the gas planet and the fourth, the third was in the proper astrophysical position for being close enough to its primary to be habitable. It had three moons, the largest farther out, with two inner ones seeming to chase each other. Must wreak havoc with the tidal system. She decided to call the third planet Erehwon, partly after an old dystopic novel she'd once read and partly because it was "nowhere" backward and that certainly was her present situation. She hovered by the large moon to do the usual basic investigative tests, sending down an exploratory probe and waiting for its reports.

No holes in the ozone layer, the usual mix of atmospheric gases, sufficient seas, and nine continents, three with archipelagoes reaching out like broken fingers to the larger landmasses. Helm, in the AI's science officer capacity, agreed that the planet looked to be eminently habitable.

"Let's orbit and see what else we can discover," Nimisha said, toggling the log to include that order. She'd had the usual space traveller's briefing from FSP about not infecting indigenous sapients with too abrupt a contact with a space-faring race and what to do if-by any remote chance-she met other space-farers. So far the universe seemed very full of sentient species incapable of ever attaining that freedom.

"Shorter day, I see," Nimisha mentioned as they completed one orbit. "And no sign of what we tend to term 'civilisation' either."

"No, ma'am," Helm replied. "No artificial satellites. No pulses, no sonar or radar transmissions. Not even radio."

"Let's go in," she said.

The ship continued its inward spiral, quartering the planet's surface as it went. Daylight shone on a land teeming with small and large life-forms, jungles, forests, plains, and mountain ranges of considerable height and depth running like twisted spines suggesting their savage upthrust from basement rock materials. The nightside did not show any fires or the use of fossil fuels. The planet did have ore deposits that would certainly interest developers back in her native portion of the galaxy. That is, if they could establish that there were no sapient inhabitants. Further circling brought her over portions of the continents. Helm assiduously mapping, though Nimisha had turned off that screen. She tried viewing the surface at high magnification to be able to make out details, but it gave her a headache to see surface features speeding by that quickly. So she reduced the magnification and trusted Helm to call her attention to any anomalies. On the fourth lap, Helm spoke.

"Sensors read an unusual metallic mass on the plateau directly ahead."

Nimisha turned up the magnification, but they were too far out to determine what the anomaly was, other than something that perhaps ought not to be there.

"Mark it, Helm. Definitely needs to be seen."

On the seventh lap, another anomaly was discovered.

"Now that's ridiculous. We haven't seen so much as a band of humanoid nomads, but those two metallic blips are not indigenous to this planet. I'll bet my Necklace on it."

"Rash of you, dear Nimi," Doc said with an audible ripple in his voice.

"You know me, Doc," she agreed.

"Let's home in on the first anomaly, Helm. I think we've ascertained that this indigenous population is mainly composed of beasts. unlikely to be evolutionarily compromised by our presence."

"There is a third metallic anomaly, ma'am, and I am now reading a fourth."

"We'll have a dekko at those, too."

It was out of the bounds of possibility that all eighteen missing ships had landed on Erehwon, though that would have been a logical course of action, given its suitability for humans. This could be rather a fun adventure. Of course, the downside was that if they all had been stuck here-since they were still listed as missing-then she might be, too. Well, maybe some marooned male would be passable. Lady Rezalla would be furious when she learned of her daughter making any sort of an improper alliance. But celibate life was not a prospect Nimisha could contemplate with any joy!

As Helm obeyed her instructions and they cruised across the plateau to the first object of interest, the grazers didn't so much as raise their heads from their industrious eating. Great shaggy brown and black creatures, they moved steadily across the grassy savanna, heads swaying back and forth as they ate. She did notice that the young of this species were kept behind a formidable wall of their elders. So there were predators of some sort.

"We are closing, ma'am. Shall I magnify?" Helm asked.

"By all means." She gasped as the sharply defined image filled the screen. "Undeniably a spaceship," she said. "A match on our files?"

"A fair big mouthful for that wormhole to trap," Doc remarked.

Nimisha gave a bark of laughter. "Trap? That's a good description of a wormhole. Well, well. This ship's very old. Maybe we're number twenty, not nineteen. Can you decipher anything of the ship's original ID markings, Helm?"

"Wind, sun, and time have scoured the hull, which was badly damaged."

"In the wormhole?"

"That is a distinct possibility given the turbulence the Fiver experienced. The tube of the hole did not have a regular shape. It was difficult to avoid contact with the walls."

"Which proves the merit of having an AI at the helm, when femtosecond reactions are required," Nimisha said approvingly.

"Perhaps when we are closer, some traces will be legible enough to identify the craft," Helm said, unaffected by either praise or blame.

"An ID might give a clue as the frequency of the wormhole on the FSP side of it," Doc said.

"My very thought, Doc. But it's not very well designed, is it?" she commented, scanning the vessel. "Cumbersome, to say the least."

"No match, ma'am, on available files."

"That old?" asked Doc.

"Not disparaging the files of our Navy, are you, Doc?"

"Even their files do not contain some of the early independent efforts of humankind to probe space for habitable planets."

"That's true enough, Doc," Nimisha agreed, rubbing her chin and trying to figure out what sort of propulsion the ship used with that stern configuration, dented and mangled as it was. She shook her head and gave a sigh.

By now, they were closing with the object, and Helm automatically switched to normal screen.

The ship hadn't been landed with any great skill, for its prow had plowed a long furrow across the plateau to where a high ridge out-thrust from the foothills had finally halted its forward momentum. The furrow was clearly visible from the air, along with the heavy vegetation that had grown up in it. She could distinguish the bleached white skeletons of the giant grazers that had been bowled out of the way of this minor leviathan until it had come to a grinding halt.

"It's been there a long time," she murmured as they closed with the wreck. "How could anyone survive such a crash?"

"The ship was not designed for landing," Helm said. "It is also not equipped with either thrusters or vanes for atmospheric manoeuvring."

"Any life signs?" asked Doc.

Nimisha laughed at such optimism. "Hardly, if such dense vegetation has grown up on the avenue it plowed. Probably from the First Diaspora. Imagine being brave enough to go into space in that sort of contraption," she added with some admiration. "Please land, Helm, near the center of the ship. I see some sort of airlock in its side."

She dressed in appropriate skintight protective gear for a first walkabout. As the air had tested pure, she didn't require a breathing apparatus. Pure enough to breathe, but slightly tainted with an unfamiliar smell, she thought as she stepped out of the Fiver and onto the thick grassoid surface covering. Three steps into it, she was glad of the impregnability of her suit, for the "grass" was saw-toothed and managed to leave scratches on the tough material. What digestive equipment those shaggy creatures must have to graze on this, she reflected. She took samples of the obvious varieties growing about her and had to use the vibro blade to sever the blades and stems.

She tripped over the first skeleton, partially hidden in the vegetation and by the remains of its apparel.

"Human skeleton, clad in exceedingly durable clothing," she reported to Helm.

"Bring me a swatch of the material and a bone and I'll do a forensic and carbon-date it," Doc suggested. The longest finger bone was added to her pouch, along with a piece of the material, now so old it tore like paper.

"They must have set up some sort of a camp," she said. There was a clearing of sorts, evidently made by melting the ground into a semi-glaze that defied the grassoid's attempts at succession. There were oddments of metal scattered about, poking up from the dirt that had blown over them. The larger items she unearthed were crushed as if the grazers had put their big clumsy feet on them.

"Analysis suggests this ship was of a design used in the First Diaspora, with chemical fuel engines of the type typical of that period for planetary landing and takeoff," Helm informed her. "I have been able to distinguish sufficient of the faded insignia on the bow to determine that it belonged to a federation known as the United Nations of Earth. We are the twentieth ship to come through the wormhole."

"Thank you for that update on our position, Helm," she said with gentle irony. She had not programmed any humour into Helm, but sometimes he was inadvertently funny. Then she looked at the timeworn spaceship. "Poor guys," she said, shaking her head.

Gaining entrance to the ship was not a problem. A ramp or steps of some kind must originally have been used, but the centuries had allowed a buildup of windblown dirt and debris that reached to the lower lip of the hatch. There were exterior controls where any sensible designer would have put them, and since she was an even more sophisticated designer, it took only moments to open the airlock. She climbed in. The inner lock stood open, and as she neared it, she heard some sort of ventilation system begin to circulate the air inside.

"Not bad," she said. "Some power remains."

"Solar panels have been detected," Helm said.

"Why would they use solar panels if this wasn't a landing type craft?"

"There were many attempts at achieving the optimum use of many power sources-chemical, nuclear fusion, and solar power, both from generator panels and light sails-on early spacecraft,"

Helm said in the pedantic tone he assumed for his "science officer" role.

"Well, they did that right."

Nevertheless, the air was stale and still had an acrid stink that left a taste at the back of her throat of metals, old foodstuffs, human perspiration, and hydrocarbon hydraulic and lubricant fluids.

"One does have to air the place out every now and then," she said in her best imitation of her womb-mother.

"Repeat?" Helm asked, mystified.

"Don't bother," Doc said. "I'll explain it to him."

She went forward to where she expected to find the bridge. And did, though it was dark, since the forward screen had crashed right into the rock of the hillside and was now shards on the deck. She used her wrist light and found the appropriate toggle. She pushed it and faint illumination resulted-enough to see that the bridge was empty. She hadn't expected to see any bodies. The establishment of some sort of a base camp indicated there had been crash survivors enough to have suitably interred their dead. The big question was if any had survived long enough to establish a colony.

She tried to access the bridge log, but evidently the small source of power that circulated the air did not spark the computer systems into action.

She toured the ship and its cramped crew quarters with bunks stripped to the metal frames. Lockers had been emptied; dust had sifted in through the vents over the centuries that the ship had lain here. The galley, when she entered it, was also tidy, apart from dust. Again all useable items had been taken. The same could be said of any other transportable item or equipment that such a vessel would have carried. Well, if one were shipwrecked on an alien planet, one would certainly use whatever equipment was on hand. Only where had it-and its porters-gone? Would she find the descendants somewhere else? Had they regressed to a primitive state in the meantime? Certainly she had seen neither fires nor fossil fuel smoke to indicate any human settlement… so far, that is. The climate of the plateau and its position on the continent made it part of a temperate zone. Considering the new growth she had noticed on trees and shrubs, she had landed in this planet's vernal period. Part of the shagginess of the grazers might be due to shedding winter fur.

Time after time, she had to shake her head at the clumsiness of design in the spaceship, the heaviness of the building materials.

"I shouldn't criticise. FSP didn't even have petralloy until two centuries ago," she remarked. "Easy for me to find their design attempts awkward and inefficient. They got this far with what they had. Give them credit."

"Most creditable," Helm agreed.

"Definitely first wave of the Diaspora," Doc said, having finished the analyses.

"Is this ship among the eighteen cited?" Nimisha asked.

"No, ma'am."

She checked all storage areas and found them empty. And dusty. An orderly withdrawal from the ship. But where to? She returned, striding in her own footprints in the dust, wondering if this would add to the mystery of the ship for future explorers. The whimsy made her grin.

She was glad to be outside in the fresher air. She closed the outer air lock to preserve what power remained. She might want to come back and investigate. There were other metallic anomalies to be examined. If there were actually four ships already marooned on this planet, had the groups joined forces? But if they had joined up, why had they not made use of even such basic requirements as fire, for heating, cooking, and lighting? And built shelters of some description? Or used caves? A rudimentary necessity, or at least a comfort. She had fireplaces in rooms that were heated by cheap and non-polluting substances. She'd even had one at the Yard in her private office for those late night sessions with her subordinates. And tete-a-tetes with Caleb. Oh, dear, better not think of him, she thought in dismay.

She prowled around the rusting ship and found the little graveyard, sited in the churned up soil of the landing, above and to one side of the ship's resting place. Nine metal shafts were etched with the names of the dead: three women and six men. So it had been a mixed crew. The dates were four hundred years ago.

How many generations would that be? Nimisha wondered. If there had been any.

"What was the last registered disappearance that might have been a wormhole eating a ship, Helm?"

"Say again, ma'am?"

Helm liked his commands and queries crisp and uncluttered by personal opinion.

"What is the date the last ship disappeared?"

"Sixteen years ago, ma'am."

Well, that was much better than four hundred years, she thought, firmly banishing the sinking feeling of utter despair. She'd already slept away one of that sum.

"Is there any significant interval between disappearances?"

There was a definite pause as Helm worked on the answer. "A regular pattern cannot be established by the disappearances of ships."

"That could be accounted for," Doc put in, "by the fact that the disappearances themselves took time to be registered."

Even sixteen years-and then the problem of catching the wormhole as it opened at this end. But she'd miss so much of Cuiva… her darling daughter… She gave herself an admonitory shake.

"I've seen all I need to here," she told her ship. "I'm coming back aboard. Helm, please lay in a course for the second anomaly. We'll fly at a low enough altitude to see if we can spot any abandoned settlement these people may have built."

The second blip proved to be the Poolbeg FSPS 9K66E. It had landed circumspectly near a small stream. It, too, showed that it had had a rough passage through the wormhole, with gashes that in one place had damaged the hull integrity.

"She'd have had ten as crew, from the type she is," Nimisha said. "Any word on her?"

"She is listed as lost in space, ma'am, sixteen years ago."

"We know that. What other information have we on the Poolbeg'? Can you get a response from the ship?"

"I have already been calling and received no answer. I am accessing the comunit. Shall I display the result?"

"Just the last entry now, please, Helm."

On her screen was the entry, dated fourteen standard years before.

This is Lieutenant Commander Jonagren Svangel, acting captain of the Poolbeg. As we have sustained damage to our drive and cannot make the repairs required, we have voted to leave the ship to explore our immediate surroundings in the shuttle. We hope to make a base camp in the foothills… a map was inserted, showing the projected goal… and live off the land. Our botanist says there are enough nontoxic edibles to supply us with a fair diet and we have plenty of additives to supplement what we can gather or hunt. Some of the indigenous animals are ferocious, but they can be avoided. We will try to get back and update this log at regular intervals.

"And didn't, poor wretches," Nimisha murmured.

"Shall I spool back, ma'am?"

"No, but copy to our files and for the material we're storing in the beacon."

"Did you intend a physical examination of the ship or its environs?" Helm asked.

"Yes, and break out sidearms for me. I want something that's powerful enough to stop 'ferocious indigenous animals' in their tracks. Obviously the captain of the Poolbeg met with a disaster," Nimisha said.

"How do you construe that?" Doc asked.

"Because an acting captain is making the entry," Nimisha said curtly, on her way to the airlock where she donned the heaviest of her coveralls and attached the repeller harness. "Besides which I can see two graves from here. They were down to eight crew when they left the Poolbeg." She slid the stunner on to its belt hook and completed her exit apparel with a full-face helmet that had a neck protector. She wouldn't be able to turn her head as easily, but the protection might prove a wise precaution.

She paused briefly by the grave sites, pointing the recorder at the markers. Then she stood at attention for a moment, hand on her heart to salute the Service dead. They had died on the same day, two weeks before Svangel's final log entry. She wondered where the others had met their ends, since no one had returned to the Poolbeg to make updates. She detoured slightly to get a sample of the water. The shallow stream burbled down a rocky channel. Winter runoff, if this were the spring of Erehwon's year? The water was cold and clear in the sample tube.

The Poolbeg had been left as shipshape and neat as the older vessel. It had not been stripped of quite as many of its fittings, nor had all the supplies been taken with the marooned. Sixteen years would reduce the supplies the Fiver carried to crumbs. And the Poolbeg was new enough that whatever it had dispensed by way of comestibles could be used by the Fiver's catering unit. However, she could come back when she needed more, if she couldn't find local substitutes.

In fact, since they hadn't taken the small captain's gig, she decided she'd use that for an aerial reconnaissance of their proposed base campsite. And so she informed Helm.

"It's got full power. Why waste mine when this is available?" she said in an unarguable reply to Helm's polite but negative response to her idea.

"I'll run basic checks on it, but initial readings indicate all systems are go. It's designed, you know," she added with some heat, "to remain in full working order for years, considering the distances exploratory ships have to go. I know the model. It's still in service and I've flown one. It is also supplied with missiles, which my skiff isn't." Another oversight on her part: that she hadn't thought to load her skiff's weaponry for the shakedown cruise. Then she added a final rebuttal. "Besides, if there ARE survivors, they'd recognise it and that would establish my bona fide's."

On her way, she spotted examples of what anyone would call "ferocious animals." They were the size of trees, and even if someone had stunned one-as the dead captain may have-sheer momentum would have kept them moving forward. The largest one was close to ten meters from ground to undulating shoulder, or what she thought was a shoulder, since the creature did not have definite sections that could be easily labelled "legs" or "body" or "head" or "tail." It was a lump that moved by contracting and expanding its muscular frame along the ground. Nimisha wondered if it was as agile on uneven surfaces as it was on the more or less level one it was now traversing. The front part seemed to swoop down into the grassoid, raising to give her the sight of the appendages of some smaller creature disappearing from view. She didn't see a mouth, as such, or eyes, when the giant creatures raised up their front ends to investigate the gig. She increased her altitude to well above their full length. That they were aware of her presence could not be denied.

She had patched the gig's comunit into the Fiver's to allow Helm to make a record of her progress.

"Is there any chance that that life-form can spring from the ground?" Helm asked.

"I'm at one hundred meters. I doubt it. But I won't risk the possibility. This is a very alien world. They definitely know I'm above them. Whoops!"

Several wet and slimy looking ropelike objects were hurled at her from the two largest of those raised up from the ground. Neither made contact with the gig.

"Tongues?" Nimisha asked, more of herself than expecting an answer.

"There is nothing remotely similar to this life-form recorded in the Xenobiological Encyclopedia," Helm said "Rule out 'tongues,' since they have now detached from their primary source."

The thick strings fell back to sear the grassoid where they had fallen. Steam rose.

"WHATEVER YOU DO," Helm suddenly said, tone urgent, "do not shoot at them!"

"Not that I was going to, but do tell me why?" Nimisha asked.

"On reviewing the tapes, I have ascertained that the captain tried to use a projectile weapon and the segment that he hit dispersed into fragments. He was covered by the substance, which is extremely toxic, and died before anyone could assist him. Lieutenant Senior Grade Barbra Weleda tried to resuscitate him and the toxic… material… transferred itself to her body. According to the report, there wasn't much left of either to be buried in the graves you honoured."

"I see," Nimisha said after swallowing against nausea. "I wonder that any of the crew has survived if this is the sort of welcoming committee they met." She flipped on the toggle for the sensors, setting one to find metals and another to locate the polymers used when the Poolbeg was built. "We'll just sec. I'm following their proposed route. They would have been wary of these… slime slugs."

"An earlier entry by the acting captain indicates that they used the shuttle to make an aerial reconnaissance of considerable depth before they departed to establish a base," Helm said.

"They hadn't run out of intelligence, just good luck." she said as she aimed the gig at a narrow gap in the foothills. She left behind the feeding territory of the slime slugs for a winding hilly pass that was strewn with boulders and such debris that slugs could not have writhed through. "Seismic activity?" she asked Helm.

"It does not appear to be a very old world, and seismic activity has been noted in the archipelagoes. That debris, however, is more consistent with land or mudslides."

"Yes, I think I would agree," she said, looking from one of the steep sides to the other and judging the deposits on the floor of the pass. "No vegetation to attract the hungry. Or bind soil with its root systems." And the rocky path kept those slugs from getting through.

She came out of the pass-there were thirteen bends in all- into hilly country, the valleys dotted with many lakes as far as she could see in either direction.

"Definitely glacial formations," Helm said, echoing her own thoughts.

"I agree. Rather pretty," she said and then saw more of the big buffalo types grazing. There were other species as well, smaller, and each kept their distance from the other as they ate.

"Overfly one of the lakes, would you please, ma'am? I'd like a reading on any aquatic life."

"I should get a sample of the water, too. I'd love to take a full bath," Nimisha said. "The stream by the Poolbeg isn't deep enough."

"WHEN I have checked the denizens of the desired bathing place," Helm said sternly.

"Of course, Helm."

So she hovered over the nearest of the lakes, a brilliant blue reflecting the clear skies above, and sent down a sample tube. She could perceive flowing figures in the water. While the explored galaxy had provided many, many different forms on land, water dwellers seemed to follow basic designs: the bottom feeders, the middle swimmers, and the upper-level insect catchers.

"Bottoms out at thirty meters, along a crest. The shallows support reed and water grasses," Nimisha said. "I'm testing the water." The results followed on her words. "Well, definitely drinkable, with only trace minerals and nothing toxic. I shan't, however, go fishing quite yet."

"Nor bathing," Helm added repressively.

"That's right."

"ALERT!" Helm's voice reverberated through the speakers in the cabin.

"Whatever for?"

"To your port and high up, a flying object of considerable size."

Nimisha swung the bow of the gig accordingly. "Considerable size," she agreed dryly; indeed, it was probably larger than the gig. She reached the toggle to arm the forward missiles.

"It has seen you and is diving," Helm warned. "I am too far away to be of assistance."

"Good thing I took the Poolbeg's gig then, isn't it?" she said, gaining altitude and setting her sensors to magnify the oncoming menace. " 'Ods blood!" she exclaimed, an archaic epithet that one of her more effete acquaintances had resurrected and used for many occasions. "It's twice my size."

"More than twice, ma'am. My advice is to fire now."

"It's better to wait until I can see the whites of its eyes. If it has any."

The gig answered her touch on its control plates with more height and speed. The distance closed between predator and intended victim-she didn't think anything with a head that crammed with teeth and already salivating at the thought of a tasty morsel half its size had friendly intentions. She bracketed her target and sent off two clusters of missiles: one at the blunt skull of the massive avian, and a second to take off one wing. Its body was long and narrow and not a good target yet. If she missed killing it, she had a chance to veer off and come up under to get the belly-if that should happen to be its vulnerable spot.

The first cluster took off the head; the second sheared the left wing, and pieces of the creature rained down to the ground, some of the carcass landing partially in one of the larger lakes. She definitely deserved her rating as crack marksperson, she mused. As she passed over it, the corpse was slightly twitching. She swung around for a second, closer look.

"Zounds!" she exclaimed, swallowing.

"That is phenomenal," Doc remarked, evidently accessing her screens.

"I'm beginning to think that the Poolbeg's crew might have succumbed, too, if this is what they had to contend with," she said ruefully as she watched the amazing amount and variety of scavengers that swarmed over the dead flier. They oozed out of the lake and from holes in the hillside; using many varying kinds of propulsion from feet to flippers to a smaller variety of the slime slug mobility, they began to feed. "Recording, Helm? We'll need to register as many types as possible. All of them carnivorous."

"Omnivorous might be the more exact classification," Doc remarked.

She turned away from the gorging, rippling mass beneath her and aimed for the foothills.

"If you don't hurry, you'll be late for the party," she said as she saw still more creatures gathering to partake of the feast. Did Erehwon give life to anything that wasn't dangerous? What would have happened to her if she had taken a swim in the first of the tempting blue lakes? She shuddered. She would get enough water from the stream by the Poolbeg to bathe in safety in the Fiver.

It was sunset on Erehwon when she reached the point indicated on the map as the Poolbeg's base.

They had chosen well: high up on an isolated plateau, backed against a precipice down which fell a graceful cataract, so they'd had fresh water in easy reach. They had even started to build dwellings out of rock. There was no sign of the larger shuttle they'd used to transport themselves. No sign of discarded equipment either. She landed the gig as close as she could to the half-finished dwellings. No, correction: The shelters had been finished. The roofs had collapsed inward. Could the avian she had just dispatched, or more of its kind, have dive-bombed the houses? She found no corpses, but she did find pots and eating utensils in one, messed up with the debris of the roof. She found scatterings of other possessions and a graveyard containing five larger and six smaller graves. She could see where markers had been hammered in, but no inscriptions remained. As she stood in the evening wind, watching Erehwon's sun go down, she rather thought that winter winds could have blown away anything short of a stone slab. Had the winds blown in the roofs? Had the camp been untenable in the winter season? They would have had the weapons to defend themselves against aerial dive-bombers. Or had such forays continued until their weapons had been emptied? Where had they gone?

"It is respectfully recommended that you return to the Fiver, ma'am," Helm said after a longish pause.

"I think you're absolutely right. I'll be with you shortly."

And she was, dead tired, and quite ready to eat seconds of the delicious meal Cater prepared for her.

May I respectfully request that further aerial reconnaissance be done by the Fiver? The bow is equipped with asteroid defence missiles," Helm said the next morning as she entered the bridge in full protective gear.

"A good notion. I can follow in the gig. It's already been exceedingly useful so far, and I don't think it will fit on the Fiver even if I were to remove the skiff."

The small skiff, suitable for either planetary use or short hops to a space station or between ships, would have to be abandoned in order to shoehorn the gig into the garage space. She didn't wish to lose any equipment even if the skiff was unarmed and possibly too frail to withstand an attack by the aerial menaces Erehwon had spawned.

"I recommend a high-altitude search, ma'am."

"I concur," she said. "Patch it into the gig." She hoisted the supplies she had collected-food, water, and some heavier weapons- and exited the Fiver to the gig.

At three thousand meters, they levelled off and retraced her flight to the ruined base camp. She paused briefly at the lake, magnifying the site where the avian had fallen. There wasn't a shred left to show her kill. This was a hungry world, as well as omnivorous. When they reached the base camp, they hovered to take aerial records of the deserted buildings.

"If I were being attacked from under and over, I'd go somewhere no one could reach me," she said. "Let's continue to the mountain range. There may be caves that are suitable."

Humankind started off in caves, and they were still useful natural refuges on many worlds. Especially when colonists were starting off with only elementary tools with which to create new homes and societies. She had no idea what sort of equipment an exploratory vessel carried as standard supplies. They crossed another high plateau to the rough-toothed crags of the mountain range.

"Metallic object to starboard, ma'am," Helm told her as they traversed another deep valley. This one was covered with vegetation that resembled the Terran-type forests planted on Vega III, varietals that had adapted to slightly different soils. A robust river followed the course of least resistance toward a distant sea, foaming over rapids and flowing into pools that did not tempt her to bathe in them-just yet.

The shuttle was visible on the ground. And suddenly a flare lanced into the sky.

"Someone's alive," Nimisha said with a tremendous feeling of relief.

"Three… no, four humans, one young," Helm confirmed.

"I think that river meadow will accommodate both of us," Nimisha said. "I'll go in first and explain why I've purloined their gig."

"I doubt they'll mind," Doc said. "I'll want to check them over as soon as possible. This world breeds a lot of peculiar things."

"It does indeed," Nimisha heartily agreed. As she swung down and circled to land, she saw that the roof of the shuttle was scarred and dented. She wondered which denizens had been able to leave combat marks on a petralloy hull.

Two men, one of them with the child in his arms, and one woman came racing to the edge of the meadow, shielding their eyes from the glare of the sun. They wore uniforms and coverings of what must be local fur hides. The temperature outside registered as twelve degrees Celsius… cool. The woman wore a long tunic of the most beautiful gray-blue fur. The child was dressed in leather with a fur coat.

"Ma'am, are we glad to see you!" cried the man who reached her first. The other was encumbered with the child and the woman had a noticeable limp. All three were grinning from ear to ear. The child burrowed its head into the man's neck, suddenly shy in the presence of an unknown person.

"Jonagren Svangel, ma'am," said the man in the lead, reaching out his hand to grasp hers. "Lieutenant Commander and acting captain of the Poolbeg."

"Well done. Commander…" she started to say and then saw the ineffable sadness in his face. She was filled with an unexpected desire to see that sadness dispelled.

"There're only the three of us left-and Tim, of course," he said as the others arrived. "This is Jig Casper Ontell and Ensign Syrona Lester-Pitt."

They shook hands amid a babble of greetings until Jonagren held up his hand. "You're not the rescue party, are you?" he said, his tanne d and weather-beaten face losing the exultation of being found.

"No, in fact, I'm trapped, too," she said. "I'm Nimisha Boynton-Rondymense. I was doing a shakedown cruise on my ship, there, when it was captured by that damned wormhole. Come, the Fiver's landing and I'm sure you'd like a change from whatever rations you might have left."

"We've been pretty much living off what we could find," Casper said, spreading an arm in the direction of the meadow, river, and forest behind them. "Not everything is toxic." He grimaced.

"Just most," Syrona said shyly.

"I've a medical unit, Syrona," Nimisha said, leading the way to where the Fiver had touched down as delicately as a fashionable lady not wishing to sully her footwear on soil.

"How many in your crew? Were you able to launch a beacon back through the wormhole?" Jonagren asked eagerly.

"As I said, I was doing a trial run on my ship…"

All three adults stopped as they took in the sleek lines of the Fiver and her scratched hull.

"No, I didn't escape entirely without some damage," she said, seeing them focus on the scrapes. "But nothing that breached hull integrity."

"You were lucky," Jonagren said ruefully.

"I've no other crew aboard. I use AI's for Helm, Doc, and Cater," Nimisha went on and wondered at Jonagren's intense look of disappointment. She noticed that it was Casper, still holding the child, who took Syrona's arm to assist her up the ramp.

"Permission to come aboard," Jonagren said at the hatch in the traditional request. His eyes glinted with just a hint of humour. A very likeable man, was this Jonagren Svangel, Nimisha decided.

"Permission most certainly granted," Helm said, startling all four newcomers.

"Oh!" There was a very professional gleam in Jonagren's eye.

"Any business for me?" Doc asked.

"May I offer you refreshment?" was Cater's query.

"Syrona, would you like to go first?" Nimisha offered, gesturing toward the medical unit.

"No, Timmy first," she said anxiously. "I've been so worried he's not getting a balanced-enough diet."

Timmy had other ideas, screaming with fright at being placed on the strange surface. An extendible snuck up behind him and administered a mild sedative and, when he had calmed down, he permitted himself to be laid supine on the couch. His eyelids drooped and his frantic breathing cased.

Once the boy was settled, Nimisha gestured for the men to go to the dispenser while she asked Syrona what she'd like to drink.

"Oh, anything with caffeine and restoratives in it," Syrona said, a tired smile on her face. "Timmy doesn't sleep well, and I'm pregnant again."

A deep sadness in her eyes suggested to Nimisha that she had lost more than she had birthed. That would account for some of the small graves at the ruined base camp. When Nimisha brought Syrona's drink to the medical unit, Timmy looked to be fast asleep, his head angled to one side, hands lax and open at his sides while his mother watched. Syrona drank absently as she observed the visible reports the medical unit was processing.

"He's a bit underweight, Ensign Lester-Pitt," Doc said at his most reassuring. "A course of vitamins and trace minerals this planet doesn't seem to provide will fix up the deficits. You, ma'am, are far more in need of my assistance."

"How do you know my name?" Syrona asked in surprise. "The AI's are patched into my system," Nimisha said, touching the comunit on her belt. "Oh!" A quiet beep indicated the end of Timmy's medical.

"I'll show you where you can put him," Nimisha said. Syrona stood to pick up the boy.

"I'll do that," Casper said, rising from the table and wiping his mouth with one hand. "You let the Doc see to you, Syrie."

Nimisha led the way to the accommodations, and Casper whistled with soft appreciation at the amenities.

"I did design it with long-distance travel in mind," she said.

"YOU designed it, Lady Nimisha?"

"Let's dispense with titles, Casper," she said in mock-sternness. "We're all the same rank-castaway." She reached over the built-in worktop and flipped on the toggle that would allow them to hear Timmy should he wake. His father deposited him on the bunk and covered him tenderly with the thermal blanket, his fingers rubbing the soft, light fabric.

"He's the only one to survive," Casper said once they had gained the passageway. "Syrie's pregnant again."

"Well, Doc will doubtless report it."

"She keeps losing them. So did Jesse and Peri. They… died. We couldn't stop the bleeding."

"What happened to the rest of the crew? The ship records indicated eight of you left."

Casper made a bleak sound. "Encounters with the unfriendly natives."

"Are there any other kind?" Nimisha stopped and he nearly ran into her.

"Creatures. Nothing with any true sentience that we've found if, by 'sentience,' you mean capable of rationalisation and learning.

We had to give up exploring," he said. His eyes went immediately to the medical unit, but it was now covered and the mist obscured Syrona's form.

"I'm doing a full diagnostic on her," Doc said in a low voice. "She is pregnant. With proper additives and rest, she has every chance of bearing a live child. The leg bone can be repaired, of course. And I'm doing some other minor repairs while she's under anaesthesia. Nothing too bizarre, although I'll know more when the lab reports are done. I estimate she'll be with me for another two hours. Then I'll tend to you two."

"Chatty type, isn't he?" Jonagren commented with a grin. He had several plates of food before him, obviously favourites, and was talking with his mouth full.

"Old family medical man," Nimisha said after ordering a meal from Cater and bringing it back to the table to join the two men. "His bedside manner is marvellous, and his voice is reassuring all by itself."

Casper, with an apologetic nod to her, went back for more food.

"We're probably all just anaemic and full of intestinal parasites," Jonagren said. "Not much of a challenge to a high-class medic."

"I live to serve," Doc remarked.

Jonagren looked at Nimisha in surprise.

"Helm and Doc are programmed for independent conversation. Cater prefers to stuff you."

"Glad to let her," Casper and Jonagren replied in chorus, grinning at each other.

"Do not be too greedy, gentlemen. Your stomachs are unaccustomed to very rich foods," Doc said.

"They aren't going viand-wild," Nimisha said, noting that the men had chosen high protein and complex carbohydrates as well as salad greens.

"I asked my stomach what it wanted," Jonagren said, showing an unexpected touch of whimsy, "not my taste buds. We've done pretty well, thanks to the bio unit in the shuttle, and no one got poisoned…" His face went bleak.

"Don't blame yourself, Commander," Doc said. "From what we've already seen of the denizens of this planet, you did well enough to bring the four of you through the last sixteen years."

"He did, Lady Nimisha," Casper said firmly. "The first duty of an officer on a hostile planet is to survive."

Jonagren gave him a queer look.

"Well, it was as much up to… them… as it was to you… to see that they did," Casper said, obviously referring to an ongoing argument. "You couldn't be everywhere every minute." He turned to Nimisha. "We lost three crew people when the avians attacked us early one morning our first winter at the base camp. We'd rigged a scanner to warn us, but they came in swarms. Those of us who could made it to the shuttle. The roofs caving in got Morissa's baby and shattered her rib cage. Pluny was poisoned by some crawlie when he was fishing. Raez got trapped by a zonker."

"A zonker?"

"One of the nastier pieces of work this planet evolved," Jonagren said, pushing back his plate and wiping his mouth. "Sneaky thing, has lairs in the forest in some of what we took to calling Zonk trees. It also lies along branches and tries to snag unwary creatures. Powerful thing for all it's not very large. But it makes up for its size with its craftiness. Once what it uses for arms traps something, the kindest thing to do is kill it. We got out of there as fast as we could…" He shrugged, his face falling once again in sad lines that were graven on his face.

Sixteen years he'd been here, Nimisha thought, and estimated that he couldn't have been much more than thirty when they'd been marooned. He didn't look mid-forties when he stopped thinking guilty or sad. Fleet exploratory teams were given longevity treatments, as well as implants. The women must have removed their implants in order to perpetuate their numbers on this wretched planet. Brave of them, actually, Nimisha thought.

"Now that you've eaten, would you gentlemen care to freshen up? I even have new clothing, if you'd like a change."

"Too right," Casper said with a wide grin, plucking a fold of his almost-threadbare garment away from his body. "We used up all we had in stock and are experimenting with leather pants." He scrubbed his head, looking rueful. "Some hides just don't tan,"

"Some hides I wouldn't wear if I had to go naked," Jonagren added as Casper eagerly rose.

"There are empty cabins down both companionways. Take your pick," Nimisha said.

"I really should formulate a report, Nimisha," Jonagren said, looking over at the bridge.

"It's kept this long, Captain," she said, touching his hand, "and you'll feel better after a cleanup."

She was too polite to say that they badly needed cleaning-up; once in the warmth of the Fiver, a ripe odour had begun to emanate from their persons.

"We need to be clean," Casper said, pausing at the corridor. "We stink! Sorry, ma'am."

"Just dial your size from the cabin clothing dispenser," she said. Casper hesitated, looking over his shoulder at the cabin where he had deposited his son. "I'll listen for him."

"Thank you, ma'am."

As soon as both had left and she'd heard the cabin doors slide shut, she programmed the air refresher for a rapid recirculation. The pong was rather obvious, mixed with noxious smells that made her nose itch.

"Nothing dangerous in the smells," Doc said.

"How's Syrona doing?"

"She's tougher than she looks. But she's badly undernourished. Nothing that can't be fixed. Like the left tibia." Doc sounded professionally smug. "Three months pregnant with a female child. Good genes. Did some judicious tinkering to restore the pH factor and administered a rich IV."

Half an hour later, Helm announced that both men appeared to be resting in their cabins.

"Resting?" Nimisha asked, Jonagren had wanted to start his report, not take a nap, as soon as he had bathed and dressed.

"A little something I asked Cater to add to the last helpings they had," Doc said. "They need the rest more than they need to report or be reminded of those crewmates who died."

"I'll just take a turn round their camp."

"That's inadvisable, ma'am," Helm said instantly. "You heard the list of the dangerous creatures, some of which you might not recognise. I would await the escort of one of the survivors."

"Then let's test the river water and do other tasks that don't put me in any danger whatever," Nimisha said somewhat acidly, although she knew Helm's remark was sensible. Crawlies and zonkers and murderous avians and slime-throwing slugs. "I promised to listen for Timmy, too."

Using the scanners, she was able to get a look at their campsite. It was well laid out. She could see spy-eyes in the trees at the edge of the meadow. There was a newly seeded garden plot; the shimmering that surrounded it suggested they'd used a repeller field to keep it from being invaded. They probably had dug the garden out first, laying the repeller field under as well as around and over the garden. She noticed the solar panels mounted to provide power for the shuttle. She also saw the ladder leading to a cave in the cliff side. A hoist had been rigged at one side, to bring up supplies. She saw piping that indicated they must have running water in both the cave and the shuttle. They had done well with what they had. They had probably turned off such unessential power users as their comunit so that they hadn't heard the Fiver's initial call broadcast. Only sensible since they had given up hope of any rescue. Though they'd been quick enough with a flare when they'd heard the incoming aircraft.

"Helm, did you access data profiles from the Poolbeg on these three survivors?"

"Yes, ma'am," and the small data screen on the pilot's control panel lit up.

L/t. Commander Jonagren Svangel, the current captain, was forty-four years old. Right now he was lean and obviously fit. His face had acquired lines from sixteen years of stressful responsibility, not usually seen when longevity treatments keep a face youthful looking. While nowhere near the masculine beauty of Lord Rhidian, or Caleb Rustin's more rugged looks, he was definitely attractive. He had exhibited a ready sense of humour. His records said that he had joined Exploratory after two exemplary tours on the cruisers and a commendation for his quick response during an onboard accident that might have left more dead without his leadership. He had study credits for biology and xenobiology, and had passed in the top percentile the survival courses required by the Exploratory Arm of the Fleet. He came from a Fleet family whose members invariably reached captain's rank during their careers.

Lieutenant Junior Grade Casper Ontell was forty-six, also a career naval man from the Bodem system. This was his second tour of duty with Exploratory. He, too, had taken study credits for botany and chemistry, and had done very well in the required survival courses.

Ensign Syrona Lester-Pitt, now thirty-six, was from Demeathorn Blue City and, before she had joined the Fleet, had major Kill credits of some of the worst predators that hunting planet produced. She had been communications officer, and had taken advanced medic courses.

"Wonder if she knows anything about the coelura," Nimisha murmured. One of Lady Rezalla's few unfulfilled desires was to own a coelura spin. She and hundreds of other First Family women! The ultimate in a natural fabric that moulded itself to its owner's body and could alter shape, colour, and form at its wearer's discretion. Coelura spins were severely limited by the Cavernii, who had developed a way to keep the gullible avians from being spun to death with demands for their "weavings." At one time, the coelura had been close to extinction. The little avians, far more compliant than anything on Erehwon, were limited now to two spins a year, one for profit, and one to make a nest for their offspring. Their numbers were increasing, but a coelura spin was costly and the waiting list for available spins very, very long.

Nimisha whiled away the time her guests were asleep by inserting into the record what they had told her about the deaths of crew members. She'd learn about the occupants of the smaller graves later. That Svangel still keenly felt that he ought to have been able to protect his crew did him no disservice. Survival courses were useful, but none of them could catalogue all the disasters that could befall a team on an alien planet, especially a team that had no escape. FSP Navy exploration issued parameters to their teams, indicating what "normal" hazards could be overcome on a suitable M-world. If the team found more dangers than a well-equipped colony could deal with, they could indicate that the planet wasn't worth the effort. This would be one she thought she'd put on that list. Unless, of course, all these ferocious types were limited to this continent. That didn't seem likely. She wondered if the team had had time to investigate the other landmasses. Certainly they had early realised that they were stuck in this quadrant and chances of rescue were slim.

While the Poolbeg would never take off from Erehwon, now that there was the Fiver, the other two habitable planets could be explored to see if one was less dangerous.

There were also two more metallic anomalies to be investigated here. Maybe the cycle of the wormhole was shorter than fifteen years. Maybe some other unwary ship, not yet considered missing, had also been spat out in this sector. That might give a larger genetic pool to the survivors. Nimisha felt her spine twitch. With Syrona already producing children, obviously they had considered procreation one method of surviving-even if this generation was never rescued. For herself, she hadn't anticipated having more offspring… Oh, dear, dear Cuiva… there would never be another as wonderful as her anywhere in the galaxy!