Warhorse

Chapter 11

The tiny speck of brilliant light was like a lost diamond floating against the background of icy-cold stars. “Well?” Ferrol demanded as Tenzing pulled back from the telescope panel, blinking as his eyes adjusted from the dazzle of the distant asteroid to the relative darkness of the lander.

“It’s definitely getting dimmer,” the other reported, sounding even wearier than he looked. “I don’t think it would be safe to leave Pegasus’ shadow yet, though.”

“I wasn’t pla

Not that accuracy was really needed. A single glance at the asteroid was all it took to know that B was still too blazingly hot to risk direct exposure to it.

And if the light and radiation this far out was this bad…

“You think Amity could have survived?” Tenzing asked quietly.

Ferrol shook his head, the movement generating a quick flicker of lightheadedness.

It had been almost thirty hours since Amity’s departure, and he’d had barely five hours of sleep in that time. Not that staying awake to run things had made any appreciable difference. “There’s no way to know until we can move out around Pegasus and try raising them on the radio or laser,” he told Tenzing. “If the captain pushed their acceleration above the two-gee mark for any of the trip, they ought to have had time to get into the planet’s umbra before the balloon went up.”

And if they hadn’t… but there was no need to spell that scenerio out. Tenzing and everyone else on the lander and lifeboats had by now run that one out to its logical conclusion.

“Yeah,” Tenzing breathed. “Well…” He shivered.

“What’s the latest on Pegasus?” Ferrol asked, more to change the subject than for any other reason.

“No appreciable change,” Tenzing told him with a sigh. “The dust sweat chemistry is still way off all our standard benchmarks, though it seems like it might be coming back just a little.”

“Anything dramatic happen when the big burst came?”

“No. Not even anything undramatic, as far as we could tell. The Tampies said the same thing regarding its mental condition, by the way.”

“Yes, I’d heard,” Ferrol grunted, passing up the chance to tell Tenzing just how much trust he had in the Tampies’ word. Still, it was looking more and more likely that whatever was bothering Pegasus wasn’t related to the extreme conditions outside. “So that leaves us back where we started: fatigue or illness.”

“Looks that way,” Tenzing agreed soberly. “Unfortunately, without any way to treat either condition, the diagnosis seems more or less academic.”

“And of course the Tampies don’t know anything that could help.”

Tenzing gave him an odd look—the words must have come out with more venom than Ferrol had intended. “They’re doing what they can, Commander,” he said.

“You have to realize that none of them has ever seen a space horse in this condition, either.”

“Sure.” Or at least, Ferrol thought sourly, they won’t admit to it. The thought still nagged at the back of his mind that Amity’s Tampy contingent had been selected as a suicide crew, though what the Tampies could hope to gain by Amity’s destruction he couldn’t guess. “I gather nothing ever came of the vanadium test?”

“Not a whisper,” Tenzing said with a grimace. “As far as the dust sweat goes, the stuff just disappeared.”

Ferrol nodded. Vanadium had been one of the trace elements in Pegasus’ normal dust sweat that hadn’t been seen since the Jump to this system. On Dr. Sanderson’s recommendation Ferrol had ordered some instruments and tools rich in vanadium to be dumped overboard. Pegasus had promptly telekened them into a feeding orifice, but there had been no other reaction from the huge creature. Then, or in the six hours since. “Maybe we should try again with a different trace element,” he suggested. “Pegasus has stopped passing, what, eight of them?”

Tenzing shrugged. “We could try, but I really think we’d be wasting our time.

Nutritional deficiencies just don’t come on that quickly.”

“Maybe not with normal animals,” Ferrol growled. “With space horses, who can tell? Besides, it’s as good a way to waste our time as any, at least until we find out the real problem.”

“There’s that,” Tenzing conceded. “Though if the Tampies can’t figure it out, I doubt that we—”

He broke off in midsentence as Ferrol’s hand lashed out to clamp hard around his upper arm. “I don’t want to hear that again,” Ferrol told him icily. “Not from you, not from any of your people. The Tampies aren’t omniscient, they aren’t supermen, and you damn well will not behave or think otherwise. So they commune with nature and love all the humble creatures of the universe?—fine. We bend nature, and do what we like with it; and if Pegasus doesn’t want to Jump, we will damn well find a way to make it Jump. With or without the Tampies’ help.”

“Understood, Commander,” Tenzing muttered, his eyes wary.

“Make sure you do,” Ferrol said, releasing his arm. “Now get back there and find me a cure.”

Tenzing swallowed. “Yes, sir,” he said. Without another word, he turned and kicked off back to the impromptu laboratory.

I shouldn’t have chewed his head off, Ferrol thought, a touch of embarrassment seeping through the frustration and fatigue and worry. But Tenzing had more than once shown a quiet awe toward Tampy opinions that occasionally flirted with hero worship, and Ferrol had no intention of letting the aliens’ passive wait-and-seewhat- happens attitude soak into the only people who could get a handle on Pegasus’ mysterious ailment.

His eyes strayed to the bow of the lander and the Tampies… and abruptly he forgot about both embarrassment and the subtle dangers of defeatism.

The aliens were no longer merely sitting cross-legged in a rough three-dimensional circle around the Handler. Instead, they were clumped tightly together, each with a solid-looking grip on one of the Handler’s arms or legs. The Handler himself was rigid, distorted face contorted into something even stranger.

And on the amplifier helmet, half the indicator lights had gone red.

“Garin!” Ferrol snapped, launching himself toward the bow; but he was too late.

Without warning Pegasus gave a violent lurch, throwing the lander sideways and pitching Ferrol headlong into the back of one of the couches.

He was still scrambling for a handhold when the space horse lurched again, throwing him back into the air. The warble of the acceleration warning cut through the sudden confused babble, and Ferrol had barely enough time to get a grip on a couch headrest before a burst from the lander’s engines shoved the craft forward.

Yamoto, on pilot duty, was fighting to keep the lander in Pegasus’ shadow.

“Everyone strap in!” Ferrol bellowed over the dull roar. Not that anyone needed to be told. The burst lasted perhaps three seconds before cutting off, returning them to zero-gee. “Garin!” Ferrol barked again.

“Here, sir,” Garin’s voice snapped from right behind him. “What the hell’s happening?”

“I don’t know,” Ferrol returned, pulling hard on the headrest and hoping fervently that there wouldn’t be any more bumps until he reached the bow and could strap into one of the seats there. “Come on—let’s find out.”