The Ship Errant

Chapter Twelve

The Cridi were green, in every way. They were inexperienced, scared witless, and, well, physically resembled the chorus line for a production of the comedy musical Frogs In Space. Keff's natural exuberance and energy were proving to be just shy of what it took to buoy up an entire crew of aliens through their first experience of long-term space travel. Every day brought new anxieties and fears that just proved how quickly a space-going race can forget how it once adapted. He fell into bed at night, completely exhausted.

Things were slightly better now that they had passed the halfway point. Their passage around the trapped magnetic Oort debris, pooled at the balance point between the Cridi system and its sister sun, when all of Carialle's sensors had gone briefly insane, had caused hysteria among the Cridi. It had taken all Keff's tact and patience to keep the other ship's crew from mutinying against Narrow Leg and diving through the anomaly-fatally-back toward their homeworld. Carialle's suggestion, voiced at thunderous volume over all speakers, that both systems must be of identical galactic mass and weight to hold this particular configuration, lured some of the scientists out of their emotional shells to study the phenomenon of twin systems. Narrow Leg and Tall Eyebrow rallied everyone into the project. Keff spent plenty of time answering questions and supplying telemetry scans for their use. An intelligent people, they understood that to occupy their minds fully would help defy the dark. Yet, bogeys crept back nightly, leaving Keff to buoy their hearts up again in the morning.

As he staggered out into the main cabin at the beginning of his shift, in the middle of the second week in space, he glimpsed Cridi from the corner of his eye in half a dozen screens, all staring. They relaxed perceptibly when they saw him. Keff deliberately met each pair of eyes in turn, smiling with confidence. They must have been up since the dot of first shift, waiting for him to appear. Tall Eyebrow, Small Spot, Long Hand, and Big Eyes were in the corner of the cabin near the food synthesizer, the only ones who didn't look nervous.

"I'm not used to this much company," Keff growled under his breath to Carialle. "We've had too many years alone, just the two of us."

"It won't last forever," the brain reminded him, speaking through his aural implant, the lone communication signal that they kept as a private channel. All the others had been left on open broadcast to the Cridi ship so the amphibioids could monitor what was going on, Carialle was also tapped into the frequencies of both functioning Cores. She kept her frog image on the wall of the CK-963 and on one screen of the Cridi ship in case they needed to ask questions while Keff was busy or asleep. "We're doing a public service for them, and they're out to help us with our mission."

"But they're still so scared," Keff said, frustrated.

"They'll get over it once there's something to do."

"I hope so," Keff said. He sat down at the control console, and let out a huge yawn. "They're wearing me out." On the screen over it, two of Narrow Leg's crew stared out. He smiled at them.

"Hello, Gap Tooth and Wide Foot."

"Good mor-ning," they chorused in Standard, faltering only a little over the dipthong.

"That's very good," Keff said, nodding encouragingly. "Have you been studying the drama videos I sent so you could practice listening to colloquial speech?"

"Have," the first one said, then fell back on a combination of sign and numeric squeak. "Interesting, times two-times three! Terror, fire, exciting! N is greater than zero tongue trill sounds. Why?"

Keff stared, baffled. "What do you mean? Which tape were you watching?"

The other Cridi, Wide Foot, held up a card and pronounced the title with great care as she followed the words with a finger. "Gone With The Wind," she said, and turned puzzled eyes to him.

"Oh!" Keff smiled, enlightened. "It's a dialect. Trill sounds were sometimes replaced with aspirates in some regional speech patterns on Old Earth."

"Sounds soft," she said, and gave him a timid smile in return. "I like to he-ah such speech. I may adopt it."

"Oh, wonderful," Carialle said, much amused. "A frog with an American Southern accent."

"I think it adds character," Keff said. "I encourage you to experiment," he told Wide Foot.

"I shall."

As Tall Eyebrow and his companions had already proved, the Cridi were rapid learners. They absorbed the Standard As a Second Language videos that Carialle dredged out of her memory, and were speaking a form of pidgin by the end of the first week. Keff's own grasp of the Cridi spoken language was increasing every day as a result of answering so many questions. Having no residue of the tongue in his memory, Keff was finding it slower going than the three Ozranians did. Tall Eyebrow was now participating fully in discussions with his long-lost cousins.

Keff was also accumulating a considerable amount of data for the paper he was beginning to write on the evolution of the Cridi languages from a thousand years ago up to the present day.

Language instruction was only part of the program that he, Carialle, Narrow Leg, and Tall Eyebrow had worked out to keep the Cridi sane and functioning throughout the voyage. It also included cultural exchange, elementary space travel, survival techniques, and of course, lessons in how to play Myths and Legends. The new Cridi were about evenly split so far on whether or not they liked the concept of the game, but all agreed it helped to pass the time. Cridi video screens weren't sophisticated enough to produce the quality of holographic images Carialle projected, so they didn't see the same charm in it as the travelers aboard the CK-963. All the Cridi loved her three-D puzzles, which did translate reasonably well.

Carialle also shared the extensive onboard collection of entertainment tapes. Because of the language barrier, she gave them mostly music. The Cridi adored symphonies, folk music, stage musicals, operetta, plainchant, and whatever else she could winkle out of the nooks and crannies of her memory. During one communication period they sang an improvised cantata in the human fashion for her. The shrill quality of their voices sent Keff to his knees with his hands over his ears, but Carialle was touched.

"Only a little in return for all your kindness," Big Eyes had said. "With your help, we are learning not to be afraid of the journey-though all of us wonder what we will find at the end."

Since the Cridi ship ran easily using the remote control manipulation of Core amulets, the crew was able to pursue many activities in the long, empty stretches of space. Narrow Leg had set up a process to manufacture more travel globes. He used the ones Tall Eyebrow had lent them to explore the fifth planet as models, and now the native Cridi had a supply of their own, with plenty of backup units. Tall Eyebrow insisted that part of each day be devoted to learning to use the clear shells, and part for an exercise program to build up the muscles needed to manipulate them easily on a variety of terrains. Though he was aboard the brainship, he monitored exercise periods in both groups of Cridi. He was showing the kind of leadership that had impressed Keff back on the griffins' outpost.

There had been a certain amount of bickering before they'd left the fifth planet over who would travel in which ship. Keff invited any of the Cridi to fly with him and Carialle who wished to, and inadvertantly started a three-tongued argument. Narrow Leg insisted that there was room in his ship for all the Cridi. Tall Eyebrow claimed pride of place with the Central Worlds pair. Big Eyes wanted to travel with Tall Eyebrow. Narrow Leg demanded that his daughter stay with him. Big Voice couldn't decide which one he wanted to travel on, and demanded a vote of confidence. They appealed to Keff to mediate. While on the surface, all Keff's statements had to pass through Tall Eyebrow's globe-pickup. From there, they were translated into the subtleties of the spoken language over the amulet link to the Cridi, and through sign language to Small Spot and Long Hand. It was a lengthy process, sometimes frustrating, sometimes amusing. In the end, Keff had excused himself and let the Cridi battle it out among themselves.

The brainship wound up with only four guests: the original Ozran contingent, plus Big Eyes, who shared the second spare bunk with Long Hand. Narrow Leg wasn't happy having his daughter miles away across the cold void, but he had plenty of responsibilities to keep him occupied. This morning, Keff could see the Cridi commander over the shoulder of one of the crew who was plastered to a viewscreen. Narrow Leg was having one of his daily arguments with Big Voice, this time over the travel globes. The stout councillor stood, arms folded, in the bottom half of his globe. He was up to his knees in water, but still trying to maintain his dignity.

"Why do we do without our amulets?" Big Voice said, in sign and squeak. "I do not like these bubbles. Why must we learn to use them? Technology is so far beyond this already!" Tall Eyebrow automatically turned to translate for Keff in Standard voice and Ozranian sign. Keff sat down, keeping one eye on the screen and one eye on TE. He understood most of this argument. It was an old one.

"Because the ammonia in the atmosphere could burn your skin, and there's not enough oxygen to sustain you, and you may have other things to think of there than breathing," Narrow Leg said, every gesture filled with impatience. "Because the engines of our host ships have only so much energy, most of which must be saved to launch us back home, not to be used by the Core. I have told you before. And again."

Tall Eyebrow relayed the answer, and added, "He does not like discomfort. I would give him a mild sample touch of the gas, to show him what he will not believe."

"It would sting," Keff said, "but you could be right. Prove one point, and he might begin to take your word on others."

"I will suggest it to Narrow Leg when we can speak alone," Tall Eyebrow said. "But I have another notion. Big Voice," he called, interrupting the argument. The councillor used a flick of power to swivel, and stood facing him.

"What?" The impatient question came through loud and clear over both Core frequency and speaker.

"You do not have to learn to use the globe," Tall Eyebrow said, standing up and stretching to the maximum of his great height.

"I do not?" Big Voice asked, with a shrill squeak that went up almost above human hearing.

"Not at all," the Ozranian leader said. "You shall gather information for us. You shall remain safe in the ship at all times while the rest of us make our exploration. We will report back to you what we find."

Big Voice stared and spluttered. "That is not correct! Think of my position. I am a high official of the conclave! I should be in the first rank."

Tall Eyebrow shrugged his thin shoulders, a gesture borrowed from Keff. "If you cannot use a globe, you cannot precede us. The atmosphere is undoubtedly too dangerous. We would not put you in peril of your life. You are, as you say, a high official."

The councillor's eyes narrowed.

"I shall practice," Big Voice said. He glanced at Narrow Leg, whose eyes were wide with amusement. "But only so I may take my rightful place."

Casually, not hurrying at all, Big Voice twisted his hand and curled his fingers. The upper half of his globe lifted, inverted, and fitted itself onto the lower half. Big Voice crouched inside it and resolutely placed his hands on the inside wall. Narrow Leg retreated a few steps as the councillor drove his globe directly at him, heading out into the corridor and away from the video screen.

Tall Eyebrow turned away, chuckling, and rejoined the others. "Every step of the way he fights," he said. "He makes me earn my place."

"You do very well," Keff told him. "I think you're quite a leader. I'd be proud to follow you myself."

Carialle's deep, musical laugh filled the room, and Keff glanced over at her image on the wall. "You should hear him. He's cursing to himself that TE might make him miss out on any of the adventure. In between grunts, that is."

"I am afraid," Big Eyes said, and made a gesture of shame. "I was all excited for adventure; now, prudence."

"It is wise to be afraid, but do not let it paralyze you," Tall Eyebrow signed firmly. He put an arm around her. "You have a healthy body and sharp wits, and the strength of the Core is ours. I may not be a military leader, but I can at least show you how to survive. In terrible conditions we manufactured the globes with which your cousins survive on Sky Clear. You have done that, too. You can learn more. Together we can do better. We can prosper." The young female looked hopeful, encouraging the male to smile. "You teach me more verbal language, I tell you of survival. We exchange as we go."

"Bravo, TE," Carialle whispered over the mastoid implant to Keff.

Big Eyes was obviously impressed, by the way she gazed at Tall Eyebrow- and other Cridi were listening. Clearly they were nodding wisely to one another, they found encouragement in the Ozranian leader's words.

"I hope you teach me more than that," the female said at last, with a coy look up under her eyelids. Tall Eyebrow looked pleased and a little flustered.

"They don't need us at all," Keff murmured.

In spite of the discomfort of diminished privacy, Keff found the enforced closeness provided him with wonderful opportunities to observe unique sociological interaction. Once the Cridi began to relax, they reverted to their normal personalities.

Tall Eyebrow and the other two Ozranians were also affected by the lack of privacy. TE seemed torn between his desire to spend every waking moment with Big Eyes, and his need to get away by himself for a while.

"It is too crowded," he had said wistfully to Keff in an unguarded moment. Keff sympathized.

Wisely, the young female perceived that not everyone had grown up in a household crowded with dozens of children and other relatives, and left TE several times a day to do other things. She made friends with Long Hand, too. From the occasional eavesdrop, Keff discovered that Big Eyes was asking about life on Ozran. The facts were hard for someone brought up amid plenty and water, but to her credit, the Cridi councillor didn't blanch. She and the elder female also had numerous close conversations in the corner of the large cabin, glancing at the screens showing the Cridi in the other ship and giggling behind their palms. Big Eyes seemed to enjoy Long Hand's sardonic sense of humor.

Some funny moments were universally shared. Big Voice had appointed himself Communications Officer. He solicited messages every day from both ships, and spent about an hour broadcasting back towards Cridi. The transmissions were more amusing than useful. Carialle brought in the frequency so she and Keff could enjoy the pompous administrator practicing self-aggrandizement before the video pickup. Tall Eyebrow and the others watched with interest the first two days. Thereafter they turned off the sound and made rude signs among themselves. Big Voice's tenth transmission made especially good comedy.

"Further advancement has been made. I have observed constellations as mapped by our ancestors in their star charts. I am pleased to let the Council and the constituency of Cridi know that those charts are accurate!"

"Oh, no!" Big Eyes signed merrily, waving her hands at the 3-D image. "Get away."

"I am pleased that he has allowed the poor navigators to trust those maps that have been in place for a thousand years," Long Hand gestured, with a sly look in her eyes.

"Important message from our ship commander, Narrow Leg," Big Voice continued, picking up a minute square of white. "We have approached and passed halfway point of journey, and expect to arrive at our destination soon. This is confirmed by our human companions, Keff and Carialle"-he made the sign of the 'Watcher Within the Walls'-"We are grateful for their input, since they confirm what it is that we learn."

"That's not exactly what you said," Keff said to Carialle. "You told Narrow Leg where we are, and he checked it." Her frog image on the wall made much the same throwing-away gesture that Big Eyes had.

"Let him tell their press whatever he wants," she said. "If it will help public relations, I don't care what he says. Do you think any of them kept listening past the first five minutes?"

"I doubt it," Keff said, sitting down with a thump on the bench of his Rotoflex exercise machine at a good remove from Big Voice's screen. "I don't know why Narrow Leg lets him blather on like that."

The commander, whose face was visible on the screen nearest Keff's bench, must have heard his last remark.

"It serves to unite," the old one said, his wrinkled, pistachio-colored face creasing in a friendly grimace. "It does him no harm, because others have too much tact to tell him he is silly."

"Aren't you afraid all that nonsense will begin to pall? You don't want the folks back home to lose interest in what you're doing because he"-Keff tilted his head toward the main screen-"bores them to death."

Narrow Leg shook his head. "He is too shrewd to allow himself to be boring. And he is not. Every day he finds a new way to make himself ridiculous. It does not matter what the media say, so long as they say something with one's name in it. That is what Big Voice thinks. Most importantly, it keeps our minds off what we are doing. If allowed to brood, I think my folk would go mad. That is why I like your games and puzzles and lessons."

"Thank you," Carialle said. "I wish you'd say that to our administration. They think we are already mad for playing games on long flights."

"I shall," the old one said, with a courtly nod, "at the first available opportunity. How is our progress?"

"Very good," Carialle said. "I was right that the gravity well between the twin systems would destroy the ion trail where it passed closest, but now that we're past it, I'm seeing plenty. I'm also getting traces of low-power radio transmissions from the twin system."

The old one cocked his head to one side and looked pleased. "The fourth planet, yes?"

"Yes. With your people's extensive history of space travel I'm surprised you never explored in the system closest to your own, in spite of the gravity well."

"We did," Narrow Leg said, the pixels in his image updating in waves as he swiveled toward his own computer. "We knew of civilization. Our explorers had images of artifacts, buildings-perhaps houses. Large. See here, now." He waved a hand, and the image that was in front of him superimposed itself on the communication screen between him and Keff. In the Cridi format the view was hard to make out, but on the sides of a rocky, steep gorge, the brawn could make out structures that were clearly artificial.

"Well, I'll be damned," he said, his eyebrows creeping upward into his hairline. "Then why didn't your people ever land there?"

"Already inhabited," the Cridi captain said simply, returning to the screen. "We wished planets for colonization, so we did not pay attention to ones with intelligent life. It was remiss of us," he added grimly. "We should have."

Carialle's frog image looked thoughtful. "Why didn't you make contact with them? They're your nearest neighbors."

Narrow Leg shook his head. "Crude. Too primitive. We knew they were too far behind us to share civilization. Someday, we thought."

Keff snorted. "Well, it looks like they evolved in a hurry."

"If they're our pirates," Carialle said, warningly. "We might just be following the gang from base to base. Narrow Leg, I'd like to copy your data and send it with ours to the CenCom when we transmit next."

"My honor," the captain said, bowing.

"Just a moment!" Big Voice came up behind the commander. While the three of them had been chatting, the councillor had finished his daily tirade. Clearly he had overheard or overseen the last exchange. "I wish to send such a message to your Central Committee. Today!"

"You can't," Keff said, quickly. He glanced at Carialle's frog image, which spread its big mouth in dismay. He knew they shared the same thought. They didn't want to alert the CenCom just yet that they were flying a joint mission with the Cridi. They had already disobeyed a direct order to return. The next time they made contact with CW there'd be a hue and cry out after them, so they'd better have the proof they needed in hand.

Big Voice looked upset. "Why not? You have communication frequencies as we do."

Carialle's frog image suddenly filled the screens. "Honored councillor," she said, waiting while the IT program filtered her Standard speech into Cridi voice-language, "it would confuse matters for our diplomats. Keff and I are the only members of the Central Worlds with a working knowledge of your language. There is no translator in the CenCom who would be able to appreciate your most important words."

"Ah, I see," Big Voice said, leaning back with his long, spidery hands propped proudly on his chest. "Naturally not. I must wait until I may see them face-to-face-which I hope will not be long."

"No," Keff said. "It'll be as soon as we can make it."

Big Voice left, looking very satisfied.

"Well handled," Narrow Leg signed to them, with very small motions obscured from the rest of the room.

Carialle's hand signs were equally discreet. "We have our bores, too."

A soft sound woke Keff in his cabin. He opened his eyes to the darkness.

"Yes? Who's there?"

"Keff?" Carialle's voice came very softly from his aural implant. "Come on forward. I'm getting clearer transmissions from Planet Four. I think you want to hear these."

Keff pulled on a pair of exercise pants and padded out into the cabin. A soft hum, the sound of the frogs breathing, came from behind the closed room across the corridor. Carialle illuminated a faint line of blue along the wall to guide him. He slid into his chair.

"We just came into range where I could pick up those faint radio signals intact. I think it's telephone conversations, words and pictures."

"Really?" Keff asked, interested enough to wake up almost all the way. "And are they the griffins?"

"See for yourself."

"Paydirt!" Keff exclaimed in an excited hiss. He glanced over his shoulder to see if the Cridi had heard him. He turned back for another good look.

In the tank in front of him, a long, narrow image took shape. The being pictured was indeed a griffin. It was younger and slighter than any of the brutes the team had left behind in the Cridi system. It put the tips of its wing-claws together under its chin in a sort of namaste, then let the wings flip around to its back.

"Freihur," it said, the slit upper lip opening and closing breathily. "Solahiaforn. Zsihivonachaella." A burst of static broke up the picture, and it reformed around the speaker saying, "… Volpachur."

"You're right," Keff said. "It does sound like half a telephone conversation. I'm surprised you haven't picked up any mass communication channels."

"Maybe they don't have any," Carialle said. "But isn't this better?"

"A thousand times," Keff said, feeling for the keypad to activate IT. The server controlling the translation program beeped softly to tell him it was operating. "I might be able to separate out some appropriate phrases between now and our arrival. Starting with 'hello,' if that's what that first word meant. 'Freihur,'" he said, trying it out with a trill of his tongue. "How close are we?"

"About five days," Carialle said. "… Keff, I feel uneasy."

He felt a twinge of anxiety for her, and gazed at her pillar as if it might give him some clue how to help her. "I know how much of a strain this is on you, personally. You know I'm for you, all the way. I simply don't know how much I can help, if we run into-into anybody."

Carialle sighed. "I don't know how I'll react. But thank you for your support. This is the best way to lay my personal demons."

"You're right," Keff said, settling himself more comfortably in front of the screen. "And with this I now stand a better chance of cooperation. This is what I was wishing for after the Cridi froze those griffins. How bad is the gain? Can you get me some more?"

"Cued up and waiting for you, Sir Knight," Carialle said, feeling better in the face of Keff's enthusiasm.

At the beginning of day shift, Carialle watched the Cridi on the other ship reacting with surprise to seeing Keff already up before them. Narrow Leg immediately intuited that something important was afoot.

"What is new?" he asked, in Standard, making his way to the screen nearest the console.

"Good morning, captain," Keff said, still staring at the griffin on the screen, a delicate, sable-furred one with a chip on its front left fang. He swiveled toward the screen. "Language lessons."

"The beasts!" Narrow Leg exclaimed, his hands flying.

"We're close enough to pick up their low-power transmissions," Carialle said, forwarding receiver data to the Cridi technical operator. "I think it's a tower-based, amplitude-modulated system."

"Indeed? The monsters have come far," the Cridi captain said. "No electronics were reported many years past."

"How long?" Keff asked. "My own species went from wood stoves to satellite technology in the same generation."

The Cridi opened his large mouth wide, then closed it. "I have forgotten that progress moves tenfold, and tenfold again. It is long since my people discovered non-motor engines."

"Mine, too," Keff said. "It looks like these people made their leap much more recently."

"Have done so without morals," the Cridi said, almost dismissively. "We shall have much to say to them on that subject."

Keff held up his hands. "Slow down a little, Narrow Leg. I've barely learned how to say 'Greetings,' in their language. It is going to take time."

"We shall help you," Narrow Leg said, resolutely. "It is better to work on a project that will advance our understanding than spend time playing puzzles." He shot an impatient glance at his crew, who were now involved in an interactive game with the brainship.

"I'll take care of that," Carialle said cheerfully. She reached into her peripherals for her game function and clicked it off. Screens all over the Cridi ship went blank, and she heard outraged peeps. Disappointed crew members, suddenly noticing that their captain's eye was upon them, immediately tried to look busy.

"I'll tight-beam them all the linguistic data we have so far," she said.

"Think of it as a new kind of game," Keff said, more lightly than he felt. "We're stalking the wild syntax in its lair."

"No. It is rather another weapon in our hand," the Cridi captain said. "This is the confirmation we have sought, after all: that the marauders are here. That is where retribution begins."

"No!" Carialle interrupted him, with a touch of alarm. "Captain, we are investigating this system to gather information, not start an interstellar war. We're not armed."

"No, you are not, but we are."

"With respect, Captain, we must-and will-stand between you and the griffins if you start a conflict."

"Even though yours have also died at their hands." The old male made it a statement instead of a question.

Keff gulped, the memory of the dead on the asteroid clear in his mind. "That only makes what we have to do that much harder, Narrow Leg. That is the unhappy part of diplomacy."

"In the end such an outcome can only be a tragedy," Narrow Leg said, with a sudden expression of sympathy. "I shall not be the one to sacrifice our friendship. We will help you."

The radio transmissions from the griffin homeworld were primitive and infrequent, but as the two ships neared it, Carialle had no trouble capturing and translating the broadcasts into pictures and sound.

The files they'd gotten from the pirate base computer were put to one side. To Keff and IT those had been no help at all. The overlay of narration in musical horn-call on the astrogation file was unreliable as a point of comparison between the two languages. Where Central Worlds had long commentary on a particular system, there might be a single phrase or two of description in griffin. On a star-chart dismissed by the CW astrogators in four sentences as unimportant, Keff listened to a three-minute horn solo that sounded beautiful, but meant nothing to IT. He couldn't separate the language into words. Here and there, a word in the griffin speech sounded like the CW name for a system: "Farkash," for "Barkus," and so on. The difference was due to the griffin facial physiognomy. Keff wondered what had happened to the human computer operator who had told them how to use the system and pronounced some of the names for them.

In the live transmissions from the planet, Keff saw the creatures speaking in colloquial dialect. After several hours of listening to tape after tape, he was delighted to begin to discern patterns. Each of the messages began with the same word or words of greeting: "Freihur." Keff had his "hello."

"This is my Rosetta stone," he told Tall Eyebrow, with a flourish. "This is the way we can begin to understand the language."

The Frog Prince's eyes shone. He and Big Eyes sat with Keff while he was trying to make some sense out of the griffin tapes during that first day. They imitated the phrases they heard, only two or three octaves higher, flutes playing alongside trombones and trumpets. Keff thought they had reasonably good ears, but it was only music to them. They still lacked any concept of meaning. The Cridi were better at concrete, spatial concepts, rather than abstract, but they retained perfectly what he told them. IT began to pick out sentence patterns, even separating word roots where they were repeated in different combinations. Carialle now had thousands of "telephone conversations" from which Keff could work. He was steadily gleaning vocabulary, where the caller occasionally showed an object to his or her callee. None of it was much help; he doubted he'd have occasion to refer to plants, babies, mixing bowls, or necklaces in a diplomatic conversation, but the use of noun and pronoun patterns was useful. Some of the extra memory that the CW had thoughtfully provided Carialle for the diplomatic mission was coming in very handy. They'd have to see what they could do about keeping it when they returned to base.

Keff stayed at the console, still working on the language question when the Cridi went off for baths and bed. He half-listened to the excited chirps of conversation coming from the spare cabin as the frogs discussed the day's discovery. Soon, the noise died away, and he glimpsed the light go out just before the cabin door slid shut.

He was concerned about what he would find when they made orbit, or landed on the griffin homeworld. Would they have to run for their lives? Were they blundering blindly into a trap? And how would the Cridi react? It would be the end of his and Carialle's careers if they deliberately put the elements together for an interstellar conflict.

And he was concerned about Carialle's state of mind. Their duties as hosts and teachers had taken up much of the personal time they usually spent together. For the first time in years he couldn't guess what she was thinking.

Her determination to pursue the hunt had led her to concentrate most of her attention on it. Her theory that the griffin ship was transiting frequently between the Cridi system and the one next door was borne out by the discovery of the wispy threads of many ion trails. They were delicate, hard to see, and remarkably easy to overshoot. Carialle did a lot of backtracking when the thin traces broke and drifted away where they'd been disturbed by anomalies such as ion storms or comets. Picking up the aud/vid broadcasts and confirming that they were heading for the griffin stronghold should have made her relax, but she seemed more concentrated than ever. Multiplexing astrogation, running the ship, playing M amp;L with the Cridi, maintaining lines of communication and acting as data librarian pulled her attention in a dozen directions at once. Keff worried that in the midst of it all she was thinking too hard about what lay ahead. What if this turned out to be another dry hole in her search for the beings that once threatened her life and sanity? Where would they go next? The team was risking censure and worse by CenCom, and Maxwell-Corey in particular, by ignoring their orders, and yet they couldn't stay off-line forever. Sooner or later they had to communicate, no matter what that brought in return. True, circumstances had changed a routine mission into an emergency, but would the IG see it that way? M-C already doubted the soundness of Carialle's emotions, enough to jeopardize his own position by rigging her with a telltale missile.

Keff felt his face grow hot, and realized he was still just as mad about M-C's impossible gall as he had been when the message probe had launched. He stood up from the console, commanding IT to save his last hour's progress. Then, he plunked himself down on his exercise bench and started pulling on the weight bars until he began to breathe in rhythm. Soon, the resentment was driven out by the simple beat of the weights clapping together. The tension melted away, replaced by the honest warmth of a good workout. Eyes closed, he smiled at the ceiling.

"Penny for them," Carialle's voice said.

He opened his eyes, but continued to haul on the pulleys. "I was just thinking we haven't talked in a long time. Just the two of us."

"I've been missing that, too," she said, regretfully. "It takes a lot out of a girl, playing hostess nonstop."

"Same here," Keff said, giving one last massive flex of his shoulders that took all the tension out of the part of his back between the scapulae, and let the weights down gently. "Just now I'm tempted to agree with the IG's assessment that we're nuts."

"Still doubt we're doing the right thing?"

"I wonder," Keff said. He stood up and reached for a towel slung over the back of the Rotoflex. "These people trust us enough to accompany them into the great unknown on their very first spaceflight, with their very first working ship after being grounded for fifty years. So many things could go wrong!"

"But they haven't, Sir Keff," Carialle said, manifesting her Lady Fair image on the wall. It was outlined in white. Keff smiled at her, feeling as if he was meeting an old and beloved friend again after a long, lonely separation. It occured to him, with characteristic wry humor that it had been a long time since he'd seen a flesh-and-blood woman, either. Time enough for that at mission's end. "Don't overanticipate, my dear friend. I'm not, I promise you. Don't worry about specifics. Just keep on your toes."

"Stand and deliver!" a man's baritone voice barked from beside him. Keff jumped to one side, putting the weight bench between himself and the rude looking villain in a tunic standing in a torchlit doorway. The man was leveling a fearsome sword at his throat. Keff grinned ferociously and edged toward his laser epee, slung handily across the back of one of the crash couches. He realized Carialle had created the aural effect by activating only his left ear implant. The villain paced him with his swordpoint, his black brows lowered over narrow eyes.

"Clever, lady," Keff said. With a quick lift and slide, he unsheathed his sword, and assumed the en garde position.

"Put 'em up," she said, in the enemy's deep voice. "We both need a good game, just you and me."

"Right," Keff said, tipping the glowing red point of his blade toward the man's face, and circling it slowly. "Shall we duel with, or without conversation?"

"Oh, with," Carialle said, making the man's image grin ferally. "With, of course."