something....” And then she knew. The life pod from Otroub. “He’s conscious. He’s terrified.” She knew. She didn’t know how she knew. She just knew.
“Who’s terrified?”
“The passenger!” She recounted what she knew of Otroub’s passenger without mentioning her impression that he could be a Dreamer. That, of course, was nonsense. “And Barkyr says it will probably be days until help can reach us, never mind him. He’s hurt. He can’t pilot that pod.”
Idom pivoted in the seat and took her hands. “Kyllikki, it’s at least six times as far from here to that pod as it is from here to Barkyr, and the distance is increasing rapidly. Child, there’s no way you could be getting anything from a non-telepath you don’t even know who’s that far—”
She pulled her hands away. Idom was old enough to have the right to “child” anyone on Prosperity, even the Captain. But fighting the smearing echoes in her brain left her no patience. “Idom, when I tell you how to count a ship into a dive, then you can tell me what I can and can’t do!”
Their eyes locked.
He’s right. It’s not possible. Admitting that she’d been injured in some strange way, she doubted her sanity. Like the light-etched key image that still burned behind her consciousness, the vision of the passenger as Ckam had seen him possessed her mind’s eye. It all whirled and mixed and beat at her, and she couldn’t think straight. But—
“Regardless of what I do or don’t know now, I knew when Otroub blew, that one pod had escaped. Scanners never detected the distress beacon. It’s a defective pod. Are we going to let him die? Out there? Alone?”
Idom sighed. “I do think I can move this thing now, but I programmed Barkyr as our destination. We are being carried in that general direction by momentum—”
“Recalculate,” she said implacably.
He stared at his readouts, nibbling his lip as a strange expression crept over his face. “This pod ejected with a momentum component toward Otroub’s last known position.”
“So? That just makes it easier.”
He twisted to scrutinize her. “This pod has only jets, sails, and gravitics. It’s a pathetic little toy. And we can’t use that pod’s beacon to get a fix. We can’t just wander out and look around until we find it.”
The babble in her head was driving her crazy. She closed her eyes and struggled to reconstruct her silver wall, taking care with every detail of every brick as she had learned to do almost before she could talk. Gradually, the insane babble retreated. To her dismay, it was still very perceptible, but at least it was reduced. I’ll make it.
“Move,” she snapped at Idom. “I think I’ve got the figures.” She had seen Prosperity’s helm display, and had tracked that single life pod. If there was one skill that Teleod training developed, it was visual memory.
With a touch here and a stroke there, she recreated the helm displays. “There. Is that enough, Idom?”
“For me, yes. For the Captain, maybe not.”
They traded places as the Captain’s voice burst from the speaker against a backdrop of silence. Lee must have relayed the message from Barkyr the moment the voice channel cleared, for the Captain was ordering the pods in-system. “Pod Twelve, take course parallel to Pod Six. Pod Eight, deploy sails as soon as Pod Fifteen is clear, and Pod Fifteen—”
Kyllikki searched the controls, trying to find out which pod she was in, and discovered it was Fifteen. “Captain Brev, this is Com Third in Pod Fifteen. We need a decision.”
“Go ahead, Com Third, but keep in mind Prosperity may blow at any moment.”
“Pod Fifteen contains only crew: Idom, Zuchmul, and myself. There was a defective pod ejected from Otroub with their passenger aboard unconscious. A passenger on a courier is likely to be important to the war effort, sir. Request permission to go after that pod. Idom says we can do it.”
She twisted to catch Zuchmul’s gaze with a silent interrogative. “Yes, we can do it,” he agreed.
Brev said, “Idom and you are not exactly expendable.”
“I understand, sir. If you have a pod better situated, I’ll relay my course data to them.” It was a bluff. She intended to argue each pod he elected right out of the job.
After discussion the Captain decided that Pod Fifteen’s ejection velocity was the most favorable for matching course with Otroub’s pod and they were the only one not carrying passengers. They got the job. But Kyllikki didn’t like the look Idom turned on her. Analysis of the random processes of the universe was his field, so he often saw significance where others saw only chaos. And that was the look in his eye, Kyllikki realized, as if she were an element of chaos suddenly imbued with significance. She shivered.
The Captain went on assigning courses to the mob of tiny ships while Idom followed orders and switched frequencies to consult a Helm Officer in another pod, plotting their course correction, avoiding the mines spreading in the wake of the attackers. Within minutes they had a course with a return roughly calculated and had begun to accelerate away from Prosperity at a more reassuring rate.
The Captain came onto their frequency. “Pod Fifteen! Idom, what do you think you’re doing? You’ll have no fuel for the return. Go out on a slow, economic orbit!”
Idom glanced back at Kyllikki, swallowed visibly, then said in the hard, level tone of one delivering indisputable fact, “The man’s injured. Time could be critical. We’ll return on gravitics or tack in using the sails.”
“I’ve got my log dump from Prosperity now, and I’m not showing any such skills among the three of you.”
“That’s right, sir,” answered Idom. “We don’t have those skills yet, sir.”
It was an old argument. The Captain trusted people to do only what they’d been taught and drilled in. He expected his crew to do the same job always in the same way. Idom, however, never did anything the same way twice if he could help it, and it never occurred to him that anyone had to teach him a thing before he could do it. Kyllikki was definitely of Idom’s persuasion in this matter and knew it added to the Captain’s distrust of her competence as a ship’s officer. Brev cleared his throat. “You haven’t thought this through! Idom, you’re supposed to be in command there. How do you expect to get that passenger out of that pod?”
Kyllikki leaned over Idom and spoke into the com. “Whichever way you order us to, Captain, of course.” She, herself, had no concrete ideas. She knew only that it was possible to do pod-pod transfers in space. “Since I’m aboard, you can have Lee relay your orders even after we lose voice-com and coherent spectral transmission. We’ll be out of touch only for a short while. Don’t worry. We can handle it.” If I can just get my head back in proper working order!
The Captain’s pod was accelerating in-system now, and already the voice channel was crackling with noise. It was too late for the Captain to order a turnaround, so when he came back, he said, “Pod Fifteen, you are to proceed with the rescue, but use both the docking tube and pressure suits. There have been too many pod equipment failures. Don’t trust anything. We’ll send you a pickup as soon as we can.”
Watching the green flags representing the pods moving away,
