Explorer

“Maybe preparatory to blowing hell out of us if we just cruise over to the station, dock, and sit.”

“So we’re going to go over to the alien ship and do what ?”

“Play it as we meet it, captain. It’s why we’re here. I’m not afraid to board them, myself, if that’s what it comes to.” Not afraid was a lie, but it was an offer he saw no recourse but to make. “Get me over there. I’ll do it.”

“The hell you say. Get you there, but we’re all there in the same ship.”

“Don’t ignore the contact we just had. My best advice. We were touched. They asked a question. Give back the same. Three blinks. Same frequency, same pace as before. You want to bet it doesn’t have a record of the last encounter? Or that there’s no cultural logic behind that output? I’d rather bet on that course of action than on going into dock right now.”

Sabin stood still, at least, gazing dead at him. “You’re crazy.”

Bren shook his head. “An opportunity. An opportunity. What do we do? Go in there, tie ourselves down at dock and diminish our range of responses? Including getting out of here, captain, as I understand is still a possibility right now.”

A long, long stare. “You think so.”

“You asked my opinion. I base it on all the information I have. Can we see this ship? Do we know how it’s shaped, what it looks like, how it’s configured?”

“Not damned informative. C3. Give us image, central screen.”

A dim image flashed up. It could have been a rock. If it had color, it was brownish black, a collection of irregularly arranged panels suspended around a core of indefinite shape, showing no lights at all at the moment.

“Does it tell you anything?” Sabin asked him.

“No,” he had to admit.

Sabin folded her arms, gazed at the screen. Then at him. “And how are you going to talk to this ship once we engage it?”

“I’ll have to find out,” Bren said. “ That’s what I do, captain. That’s what Ramirez trained Jase to do, and Ramirez made a fatal decision when he decided to back off and wait for another try, when his translator was older and better prepared. This is that next opportunity. If we don’t take them up on that invitation to communicate—if there’s any symmetry about their actions—who knows? They may hit Alpha, the way they hit here.”

Sabin looked at him, a sidelong glance, on that last. Looked away, then. And back. “A basic rule of intelligence, Mr. Cameron—you can chase just one more certainty and one more piece of information just one fatal step too far. At a certain point you have to quit listening and go with best guesses. We don’t know the situation on the station, do we? And we don’t know the situation out there.”

“We need answers,” Jase said. “We’re not going to get them on the station. If we get that far.”

“Oh, I’m in favor of answers, second captain. We’re on our original course, not quite on the original schedule, so if that ship out there fired a few minutes ago, we’ll more likely be spectators to a fire show. If we do get a strike, Mr. Cameron, at the first sign of a siren, dive under the nearest console and brace, because we’ll move long and hard; and you haven’t felt movement yet. Not in this entire trip. Not in your life , Mr. Cameron. Right now you have time to get to a takehold and time to get gra

“Yes, ma’am,” Bren said. And moved, not even pausing for a glance at Jase. The ship was acting—God save them, Sabin was taking the action Ramirez had ducked.

He reached the shelter and repeated that warning in Ragi, for the company. “Prolonged strong movement. Everyone must stay in the shelter, nadiin-ji. This situation may continue a while or change suddenly.” Five-deck would hear. Trust Asicho for that.

A siren sounded.

“ Sabin here. Take hold, take hold, take hold. Alien contact. We are manuvering after sending signal to alien craft. Stand by. ”

God, truth from a Phoenix captain.

Bren wedged himself back in among the rest. Kept his breathing calm and steady.

“Sabin-aiji has sent a signal to the foreign ship,” he said as calmly as he could manage. His breath seemed inadequate. And the braking hit. The signal had gone. Three blinks of the ship’s powerful docking spots.

Braking let up. “ Mr. Cameron .” Jase’s voice. “ Mr. Cameron to the bridge .”

“Aiji-ma. Nadiin-ji.” He groped for the padded edge of the cabinet and moved, not sure of his safety, but he answered the summons, as far as Jase’s position, against a padded wall. “Jase.”

Sabin was there, too, braced with her back against the same surface.

“Mr. Cameron.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Atevi are hearing that advisement below, too?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Bren admitted.

“Efficient. Keep it that way. Don’t get in my way. Stand by to answer questions.”

Sabin left the takehold position, walked off, resuming her continual tour. Jase stayed close to him.

“Scary,” Bren muttered.

“You noticed,” Jase said. “We’ve signaled it. We’ve changed our position in case they fire on our signal.”

“Which also tells them we fear hostile action.”

“Shouldn’t we?”

“By our logic. They should figure we thought of it and preferred to talk, not shoot. One hopes they think that way.”

A small moment in which he could scarcely believe he’d just argued with Sabin on her bridge and urged the ship to take an aggressive response—but there wasn’t a reasonable alternative. There simply wasn’t, within anything he could think of.

And even in that gut-deep human and atevi dislike of turning their backs on an enemy, in their choice to deal with the situation rather than go on in, ignoring the presence, there was animal instinct at work… a good instinct, an instinct viable in every situation that two similarly wired species could jointly think of, but that didn’t say definitively that no other answer had ever evolved in a wide universe. It only said their behavior was statistically likely to be understood, based on a sample of two and based on the limits of the translator’s own imagination.

“Likely this maneuvering will drag on now for hours,” Jase said. “It might be an opportunity to persuade the dowager below. Tell her it’s for comfort. Comfort, at least.”

“This is the woman who sleeps on stone several times a year. Who rides mountain trails in thunderstorms. Who took on Cajeiri as a ward. I don’t think we’ll persuade her easily, Jasi-ji.”

“Days, Bren. It could be days working this all out. With terrible forces, if we have to move. Hard on the whole body, even in shelter. Tell her that.”

“One will pose the question.” He made the short trek to the security cabinet, quickly, economically.

And met a row of dark and light faces all with the same wary, determined expression.

“Jase-aiji suggests this maneuver will be extremely long, even days, and that for comfort and dignity—”

“No,” Ilisidi said abruptly. “We will not go below.”

“Nand’ dowager…”

“Interesting things happen here. Not there. If I were reckless of staff safety I would send after hot tea,” Ilsidi said. “I forego the tea. In that, I have taken my personal precautions and my staff is settled in safety. We are very well. Gin-nandi is very well.” This with an all but unprecedented nod toward Gi

“I convey the respects of the ship-aijiin,” Bren said with a little bow. “And urge you all make yourselves comfortable, but sit warily, aiji-ma, nandi. One hopes this matter will work itself out peacefully.”