Explorer

“Mr. Becker, we’ve got a problem.” The pieces of information began to add up, logical enough only to the otherwise hopeless, and weren’t at all comforting to a man who had to make peace with the pattern they made. “So our arrival disturbed the situation you thought you had, and now that the currents are moving, you don’t know what else to do. But my people have spent the last several centuries figuring out how to talk outside our own species. Rumor says the aliens won’t attack you while you’ve got this prisoner. I’d say that’s an increasingly thin bet, and the more we dither about it, the thi

That last was his greatest hope, that someone had broken the language barrier, that someone knew how to communicate with this species.

The listeners in the corridor waited. Ilisidi waited, hand firmly on Cajeiri’s shoulder.

“We don’t know anything,” Becker said, Becker’s answer to everything, and that provoked an outcry of absolute frustration from the human listeners. “Listen to Cameron!” somebody yelled, out in the corridor. “Idiots! You don’t mess with aliens!”

Becker was nettled. “We don’t know anything, dammit!”

“He’s supposed to be alive,” Coroia said. “But nobody knows. We guess he is, if that ship out there is staying where it is, or maybe they just don’t know.”

“There’s supposed to be alien armament,” the fourth man said. “They’re supposed to be copying it.”

“That’s a crock,” Coroia said. “If they’re copying anything, Bauma

That insightful question brought its own small silence.

“You don’t know even that much is the truth,” Bren said. “That is the point, isn’t it? You don’t really know why you’ve been safe for the last half dozen years. The reason you’re alive just hasn’t made sense, and now that ship sitting out there, with us having stirred the pot, is liable to do nobody-knows-what. Can you tell us where this prisoner is, and can you tell us how to get to him?”

“Get families safe aboard,” Coroia said. “Get the kids all aboard.”

“That’s mass,” Bren said. “Is there fuel to move this ship anywhere if we do board the station population?”

Fearful silence. Then: “The miners went out,” Becker said. “Mining went on, six, seven years ago. There’s supposed to be fuel.”

“And mining hasn’t been going on since that ship showed. You were waiting for us with a sign on the fuel tank saying, This will explode. How did you plan to get out of the mess you’re in without us?”

“We don’t set policy.” Becker winced as even his own comrades exclaimed in outrage, and he gave a nervous glance to the patiently waiting atevi present.

“After Phoenix left—” Esan had abandoned his braced, surly stance and stuck his hands in his hip pockets. “We mined. They came and poked their noses into our corridors. We caught this bastard. And since then they haven’t tried again. That’s as much as everybody knows.”

“This second attack,” Bren said. But suddenly he was aware of the onlookers parting.

Jase had shown up.

“I’ve been on this,” Jase said under his breath, Jase, who hadn’t gotten any sleep, “from my office. What’s this prisoner goings-on, gentlemen?”

“ They say an alien prisoner exists on the station,” Bren said, dropping into Ragi, as if he were talking to the atevi present, but it was just as much Jase he intended. “They say they mined fuel. They maintain this prisoner, with whom the station does not communicate, is the reason the foreigners have not attacked a third time. Supposedly the station captured some sort of armament. But what potency it has against that ship sitting out there is questionable.”

“Possession of this prisoner,” Ilisidi said, with a thump of her cane against the floor. “This prisoner, and the fuel for the ship. We have disturbed this pond. Ripples are still moving. Shall we sit idle?”

“No, nandi,” Jase said on a breath, in Ragi, in full witness of the detainees. “We do not.” And in ship-speak: “All right. Where is this prisoner, and what does he breathe?”

Good question, that. Very good question. The planet-born didn’t routinely think about the air itself.

“They wore suits when they came in,” Becker said. “Shadowy. Big. Straight from hell.”

Big certainly answered to the silhouettes they’d exchanged with the alien ship.

“You personally saw them?” Jase asked.

“On vid.”

Anything could be faked, Bren remembered. Anything could be made up. If it weren’t for the missing station section and that ship out there, Becker’s shadowy aliens could be an old movie segment from the Archive, and those in charge had shown a previous disposition to make up vid displays.

“Spill,” Jase said. “Spill. Now. Location of this prisoner. Location of Guild offices. Everything you know.”

Becker didn’t answer at once. “Guild wing is D Section,” Coroia said in a low voice, in that silence, “and if you give me a handheld and a pen, captain, I’ll show you.”

“The hell,” Becker said.

“Beck, I’m buying it. We haven’t got another way to defend this station.”

“Back off,” Becker said to the mutiny in his ranks. “Shut up.” Then, to Jase: “I’ll show you, myself. But I want my people out of this cage and I want our families boarded, fast as we can get them here.”

“In secrecy?” Jase asked. “You want to call your next-ofs and tell them start packing, and this isn’t going to trigger questions?”

Guild might eat and breathe secrecy, Bren thought, but he didn’t bet on family co

Becker surely saw the disaster looming. He didn’t entirely leap at the chance.

“We’ve got to tell the people,” Coroia said desperately.

“And start a panic,” Becker said. “There’s got to be orders. Central’s got to give orders, Ma

“They have to,” Jase said, “but they’re not doing that. We’ve warned them. But our senior captain’s disappeared on station. You had orders to come in here and scope us for whatever you could find. For what , gentlemen?”

“For irregularities,” Becker said.

“For a head count. For a check on who’s in command.”

“Yes, sir,” Becker said.

“So you’ve got that information, plain and clear. And then what was Guild going to do?”

“We don’t know, sir.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what we’re going to do.” Jase thumbed four or five buttons on his handheld. “And we’re not going to try to maintain this station up with an alien ship breathing down our necks. You wonder what that ship’s sitting out there for? It’s sitting out there because you’ve got one of its people and it claims this space, if you want my interpretation. It claims this solar system, it’s sitting there, probably taking notes on what comes and goes here, possibly communicating with others, and we’re not disposed to argue with its sense of possession. We’re getting the lot of you out of here, we’re establishing defenses back at Alpha, and we’re drawing the line there. This station is written off, to be vacated, best gesture we can make to calm this situation down. If we can get fueled and negotiate our way past that alien craft, we’re getting you, your families, and Chairman Braddock out of here.” He showed Becker and crew the handheld. “This is your own station schematic, gentlemen, straight out of Archive. With the damage marked. Right now, give me specifics, where this prisoner is, where the primary citizen residence areas are, where Guild command is, and where our senior captain’s likely to be, if she’s been arrested. If you want your kids safe—give us facts.”