Warhorse

“Captain!” Marlowe’s voice interrupted. “Shark’s on the move again. Heading toward us on an intercept course at—good God, it’s pulling almost eight gees.”

Ke

Ferrol looked at the tactical, did a quick calculation of his own. She was right…

and it left them with exactly one option. “We’ll have to swing back in line with you from here,” he told Roman. “Squeeze ourselves and Quentin in between Man o’

War and Amity.”

“It won’t work,” Roman said, with a promptness that showed he’d already anticipated that suggestion. “The way your line is tethered, you’d wind up bringing Quentin another twenty meters or so closer to Man o’ War. You’ll never push the calf in that close.”

“We won’t have to,” Ferrol said, his eyes tracing the lines on the tethering schematic. The angles, and fulcrum points… “All we need is for you to give Man o’ War a kick forward. That should make us fall back to the end of the tether and swing right into position.”

“Only if Quentin doesn’t panic,” Roman said.

“Have we got another choice?” Ferrol countered.

“Not really,” the other agreed tightly. “Rrin-saa?—you heard. Tell Bbri-hwoo to give Man o’ War a nudge.”

For a moment, nothing. Then, as Ferrol stared at Man o’ War’s bulk, he saw it begin to move. “Here we go,” he murmured.

“Tether line tightening,” Ke

A slight tremor went through the lander, and Ferrol braced himself. But Quentin didn’t bolt; and a minute later the calf and lander had swung neatly into place inside the kilometer-long gap between Man o’ War and Amity.

Ferrol let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Amity? We’re blocked back here—what’s happening with the vultures?”

“Holding position ahead,” Roman told him. “But they seem to be in a fairly amorphous mass, and not as clearly in two groups as they were before. We may have finally done it.”

“We’ll find out soon enough,” Ferrol said. “Okay, Ppla-zu: give Quentin a small rotation.”

There was no reply. “Ppla-zu?” Ferrol said, twisting around. “—Oh, hell.”

“What?” Roman snapped.

“I’m not sure,” Ferrol growled. “But—Demothi, take a look.”

Demothi was already leaning forward to peer at the Tampy’s face. “No doubt,” he said, his voice trembling noticeably. “It’s perasiata—a sort of deep sleep or coma state.”

“Yeah, we know what perasiata is,” Ferrol gritted. And if the Handler had it, then Quentin was almost certainly out of commission, too. And if Quentin was gone—Roman had apparently followed the same line of reasoning. “Rrin-saa,” he called. “Rrin-saa! What’s happening down there? Is Man o’ War still conscious?”

“No.” Rrin-saa’s voice was quiet, almost calm. “It is the end. The cycle of life closes—”

“We’re not giving up yet,” Roman cut him off harshly. “Marlowe, give Man o’

War a shot from the comm laser—see if that’ll jolt it back to consciousness.”

“Waste of time,” Demothi murmured, more to himself than to anyone else.

“So give us an alternative,” Ferrol told him. “You’re the expert on Tampies here—how do they snap someone out of perasiata?”

“They don’t,” Demothi said bitterly. “They just sit back and let nature take its course.”

Ferrol snorted. Of course. What else would Tampies do?

“In this case nature being a predator bearing down on us at eight gees,” Ke

Ferrol shook his head. “I doubt it. A massive enough shock can knock them out, but anything less than that doesn’t seem to have any effect at all.”

Ke

“Maybe a physical jolt, then,” she suggested. “Ramming the lander into Quentin’s hide, for instance.”

Ferrol glanced behind him. Barely two hundred meters behind the lander he could see the gleam of Amity’s nose. “We’re a little close for firing the drive, aren’t we?”

“Never mind Amity’s paint job,” Roman said. “Give it a try.”

“Yes, sir.” Ke

The lander lunged forward, gathered speed… and ten seconds later rammed full into Quentin’s smoothly curved end.

The shock threw Ferrol hard against his restraints. “Ppla-zu?” he snapped, twisting his neck to look behind him.

The Tampy’s face hadn’t changed… and peering intently into that face, Demothi shook his head. “No good. He’s still under.”

Ferrol swore and turned back to the tactical display. The shark had stopped accelerating now, and was turning ponderously over for the deceleration phase of its attack. If it decelerated at the same eight gees it had been doing earlier, it would be within telekene range of them in perhaps three minutes.

“Ferrol—look at the vultures,” Ke

Ferrol shifted his attention to that part of the display. The lander’s impact with Quentin had angled the calf a couple of degrees out of line with Man o’ War…

And for the first time since they’d appeared, the vultures had failed to match the motion.

Ferrol hissed frustration between his teeth. It was, perhaps, the ultimate irony: the barrier finally lifting just as the engine died. “Great,” he said. “Hooray for us. Too bad there won’t be time to break out the champagne.”

“Knock it off,” Ke

Ferrol clenched his jaw tightly enough to hurt. She was right… but the seconds ticked by, and no inspiration came.

And the shark was two minutes away. “There’s a predator bearing down on us,”

Ke

“Unless they’re like the Tampies,” Ferrol grunted. “Ready to roll over and die whenever—”

He broke off, head jerking around as it suddenly hit him. “That’s it. They are like the Tampies—they’re both nonpredator species.”

“I don’t see—”

“Demothi!” Ferrol cut her off. “Get that helmet on—now.”

“Lander?” Roman’s voice came sharply. “What’s going on?”

“Maybe a chance to wake Quentin up,” Ferrol shouted over his shoulder. Demothi was fumbling with the helmet—fumbling far too slowly—there; it was off Pplazu‘

s head, and he was easing it over his own. “I think that’s why Quentin originally spooked and Jumped, Captain—it sensed Demothi as being a predator and tried to get away. If he can spook it again—”

Without warning, the lander lurched violently, slamming Ferrol’s teeth down on his tongue. He had just enough time to taste blood—

And suddenly a blue-white star blazed in front of them, a faint luminescent haze outlining Quentin like a halo.

They’d done it.

It took Ke

“I don’t understand,” Roman said. His eyes flicked past Rrin-saa, to where Sso-ngu and Hhom-jee sat quietly together under the twin amplifier helmets that now were wired into the Handler room. “I thought it was you who were so dead-set against abandoning Quentin the first place.”

“We could not leave him to the shark,” the Tampy said. “But the danger is now gone.”

“So why release him?” Roman persisted.

“Because he is damaged,” Rrin-saa said. “Not in body, but in his deeper self.”

“All the more reason to bring it back,” Roman countered. “Surely your people can do something to help.”