Chapter Five

“Ensign Sassinak requests permission to come aboard, sir.” Coming aboard meant crossing a painted stripe on the deck of the station, but the ritual was the same as ever.

“Permission granted.” The Officer of the Deck, a young man whose reddish skin and ice-blue eyes indicated a Brinanish origin, had one wide gold ring and a narrow one on his sleeve. He returned her salute, and Sass stepped across the stripe. Slung on her shoulder was the pack containing everything she was permitted to take aboard. Her uniforms (mess dress, working dress, seasonal working, and so on) were already aboard, sent ahead from her quarters before her final interview with the Academy Commandant after Abe’s funeral.

Her quarters were minimal: one of two female ensigns (there were five ensigns in all), she had one fold-down bunk in their tiny cubicle, one narrow locker for dress uniforms, three drawers, and a storage bin. Sass knew Mira Witsel only slightly; she had been one of Randolph Neil Paraden’s set, a short blonde just over the height limit. Sass hoped she wasn’t as arrogant as the others, but counted on her graduation rank to take care of any problems. With the other ensigns, they shared a small study/lounge (three terminals, a round table, five chairs). Quickly, she stowed her gear and took a glance at herself in the mirror strip next to the door. First impressions . . . reporting to the captain . . . she grinned at her reflection. Clean and sharp and probably all too eager . . . but it was going to be a good voyage . . . she was sure of it.

“Come in!” Through the open hatch, the captain’s voice sounded stuffy, like someone not quite easy with protocol. Fargeon. Commander Fargeon - she’d practiced that softened g, typical of his homeworld (a French-influenced version of Neo-Gaesh). Sass took a deep breath, and stepped in.

He answered her formal greeting in the same slightly stuffy voice: not hostile, but standoffish. Tall, angular, he leaned across his cluttered desk to shake her hand as if his back hurt him a little. “Sit down. Ensign,” he said, folding himself into his own chair behind his desk, and flicking keys on his desk terminal. “Ah . . . your record precedes you. Honor graduate.” He looked at her, eyes sharp. “You can’t expect to start on the top here. Ensign.”

“No, sir,” Sassinak sat perfectly still, and he finally nodded.

“Good. That’s a problem with some top graduates, but if you don’t have a swelled head, I don’t see why you should run into difficulties. Let me see - “ He peered at his terminal screen. “Yes. You are the first ensign aboard, good. I’m putting you on third watch now, but that’s not permanent, and it doesn’t mean what it does in the Academy. Starting an honor cadet on the third watch just ensures that everyone gets a fair start.”

And you don’t have to listen to complaints of favoritism, Sassinak thought to herself. She said nothing, just nodded.

“Your first training rotation will be Engineering,” Fargeon went on. “The Exec, Lieutenant Dass, will set up the duty roster. Any questions?”

Sass knew the correct answer was no, but her mind teemed with questions. She forced it back and said “No, sir.”

The captain nodded, and sent her out to meet Lieutenant Dass. Dass, in contrast to his captain, was a wiry compact man whose dark, fine-featured face was made even more memorable by light green eyes.

“Ensign Sassinak,” he drawled, in a tone that reminded her painfully of the senior cadets at the Academy when she’d been a rockhead. “Honor cadet ...”

Sassinak met his green gaze, and discovered a glint of mischief in them. “Sir - “ she began, but he interrupted.

“Never mind. Ensign. I’ve seen your record, and I know you can be polite in all circumstances, and probably work quads in your head at the same time. The captain wanted you in Engineering first, because we’ve installed a new environmental homeostasis system and it’s still being tested. You’ll be in charge of that, once you’ve had time to look over the system documentation.” He grinned at her expression: “Don’t look surprised, Ensign: you’re not a cadet in school any more. You’re a Fleet officer. We don’t have room for dead-weights; we have to know right away if you can perform for us. Now. It’s probably going to take you all your off-watch time for several days to work your way through the manuals. Feel free to ask the Engineering Chief anything you need to know, or give me a holler. On watch, you’ll have the usual standing duties, but you can spend part of most watches with the engineering crew.”

“Yes, sir.” Sass’s mind whirled. She was going to be in charge of testing the new system? A system which could kill them all if she made a serious mistake? This time the flash of memory that brought Abe to mind had no pain. He’d told her Fleet would test her limits.

“Your record says you get along with allies?”

Allies was the Fleet term for allied aliens; Sassinak had never heard it used so openly. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. We have a Weft Jig, and several Weft battle crew, and that Weft Ensign: I suppose you knew him at the Academy?” Sassinak nodded. “Oh, and have you ever seen an adult Ssli?”

“No, sir.”

“We’re Ssli-equipped, of course: all medium and heavy cruisers have been for the past two years.” He glanced at the timer. “Come along; we’ve time enough to show you.”

The Ssli habitat was a narrow oval in cross-section: ten meters on the long axis, aligned with the ship’s long axis, and only two meters wide. It extended “upward” from the heavily braced keel through five levels: almost twenty meters. The plumbing that maintained its marine environment took up almost the same cubage.

At the moment, the Ssli had grown only some three meters in diameter from its holdfast, and its fan was still almost circular. Two viewing ports allowed visual inspection of the Ssli’s environment. The Executive Officer’s stubby fingers danced on the keyboard of the terminal outside one viewing port.

“Basic courtesy - always ask before turning on the lights in there.”

Sassinak peered over his shoulder. The screen came up, and displayed both question and answer, the latter affirmative. Dass flipped a toggle, and light glowed in the water inside, illuminating a stunning magenta fan flecked with yellow and white. Sassinak stared. It seemed incredible that this huge, motionless, intricate object could be not only alive, but sentient. . . sentient enough to pass the FSP entry levels. She could hardly believe that the larval forms she’d seen in the Academy tanks had anything to do with this . . . this thing.

Somehow the reality was much stranger than just seeing tapes on it. I wonder what it feels like, she thought. How it thinks, and -

“How did they ever figure out ... ?” she said, before she thought.

“I don’t know, really. Thek discovered them, of course, and maybe they’re more likely to suspect intelligence in something that looks mineral than we are.” Dass looked at her closely. “It bothers some people a lot - how about you?”

“No.” Sassinak shook her head, still staring through the viewing port. “It’s beautiful, but hard to realize it’s sentient. But why not, after all? How do you communicate with it?”

“The usual. Biocomp interface . . . look, there’s the leads.” He pointed, and Sassinak could see the carefully shielded wires that linked the Ssli to the computer terminal. “Want an introduction?”

When she nodded, he tapped in her ID code, asked her favorite name-form, and then officer crew: general access.

“That gives it access to the general information in your file. Nothing classified, just what any other officer would be able to find out about you. Age, class rank, sex, general appearance, planet of origin, that kind of thing. If you want to share more, you can offer additional access, either by giving it the information directly, or by opening segments of your file. Now you come up here, and be ready to answer.”

On the screen before her, a greeting already topped the space. “Welcome, Ensign Sassinak; my name in Fleet is Hssrho. Have been installed here thirty standard months; you will not remember, but you met me in larval stage in your second year at the Academy.”

Sassinak remembered her first introduction to larval Ssli, in the alien communications lab, but she’d never expected to meet the same individual in sessile form. And she hadn’t remembered that name. Quickly she tapped in a greeting, and apologies for her forgetfulness.

“Never mind ... we take new names when we unite with a ship. You could not know. But I remember the cadet who apologized for bumping into my tank.”

From the Ssli, Lieutenant Dass led her through a tangle of passages into the Engineering section. Sassinak tried to pay attention to the route, but had to keep ducking under this, and stepping over that. She began to wonder if he was taking a roundabout and difficult way on purpose.

“In case you think I’m leading you by the back alleys,” he said over his shoulder, “all this junk is the redundancy we get from having two environmental systems, not just one. As soon as you’ve got the new one tuned up to Erling’s satisfaction - he’s the Engineering Chief - we can start dismantling some of this. Most of it’s testing gear anyway.”

Even after the study of ship types at the Academy, Sass found it took awhile to learn the geography of the big ship. Cruiser architecture was determined by the requirement that the ships not only mount large weapons for battles in space or against planets, but also carry troops and their support equipment, and be able to land them. Cruisers often operated alone, and thus needed a greater variety of weaponry and equipment than any one ship in a battle group. But to retain the ability to land on planet in many situations, and maneuver (if somewhat clumsily) in atmosphere, cruiser design had settled on a basic ovoid shape. Thanks to the invention of efficient internal artificial gravity, the ships no longer had to spin to produce a pseudo-gravity. The “egg” could be sliced longitudinally into decks much easier to use and build.

In their first few days, all the new ensigns took a required tour of each deck, from the narrow silent passages of Data Deck, where there was little to see but arrays of computer components, to the organized confusion of Flight Two, with the orbital shuttles, drone and manned space fighters, aircraft, and their attendant equipment, all the way down to the lowest level of Environmental, where the great plumbing systems that kept the ship functioning murmured to themselves between throbbing pump stations. Main Deck, with the bridge, nearly centered the ship, as the bridge sector centered Main Deck. Aft of the bridge was Officers’ Country, with the higher ranking officers nearer the bridge (and in larger quarters), and the ensigns tucked into their niches near the aft cargo lift that ran vertically through all decks. Lest they think this a handy arrangement, they were reminded that regulations forbade the use of the cargo lift for personnel only: they were supposed to keep fit by running up and down the ladders between decks. Main Deck also held all the administrative offices needed. Between Data Deck and Environmental was Crew, or Troop Deck, which had, in addition to crew quarters, recreation facilities, and mess, the sick bay and medical laboratory. When the ship landed on planet, a ramp opening from Troop Deck offered access to the planet’s surface.

Yet nothing, they were warned, was excess: nothing was mere decoration. Every pipe, every fitting, every electrical line, had its function, and the interruption of a single function could mean the life of the ship in a crisis. So, too, all the petty regulations: the timing of shower privileges, the spacing of the exercise machines in the gyms. It was hard for Sass to believe, but with the stern eye of a senior officer on them all, she nodded with the rest.

Shipboard duty had none of the exotic feel the ensigns had hoped for, once they knew their way around the ship. Mira, away from the social climbers at the Academy, turned out to be a warm, enthusiastic girl, willing to be friends with anyone. Her father, a wealthy merchant captain, had set her sights on a career in space. She frankly admired Sassinak for being “really strong.” To Sassinak’s surprise, when it came to working out in the gym, Mira was a lot tougher than she seemed.

“We weren’t supposed to show it off,” said Mira, when Sassinak commented on this. “Mother wanted us to be ladies, not just spacer girls - she said we’d have a lot more fun that way. And then in Neil’s bunch at the Academy ...” She looked sideways at Sassinak who suddenly realized that Mira really did want to be friends. “They always said there’s no use exceeding requirements, ‘cause the Wefts’ll get all the medals anyway. And Neil -  Mother - sent me a whole long tape about it when she found out he was in the same class. She’d have eaten me alive if I’d made an enemy of him without cause.” She patted Sassinak on the shoulder, as if she weren’t a decimeter shorter. “Sorry, but you weren’t cause enough, and it was clear you could deck Neil any time you wanted to.”

“You’re - “ Sass couldn’t think of a good term, and shook her head. Mira grinned. “I’m a typical ambitious, underbred and overfed merchanter brat, who’ll never make admiral but plans to spend a long and pleasurable career in Fleet. Incidentally serving FSP quite loyally, since I really do believe it does a lot of good, but not ever rising to flag rank and not really wanting it. Deficient in ambition, that’s what they’d grade me.”

“Not deficient in anything else,” said Sassinak. She caught the wink that Mira tipped her and grinned back. “You devious little stinker - I’ll bet you’re a good friend, at that.”

“I try to be.” Mira’s voice was suddenly demure, almost dripping honey. “When I have the chance. And when I like someone.”

Sassinak thought better of asking, but Mira volunteered.

“I like you, Sass . . . now. You were pretty stiff in the Academy, and yes, I know you had reasons. But I’d like to be friends, if you would, and I mean friends like my people mean it: fair dealing, back-to-back in a row with outsiders, but if I think you’re wrong I’ll say it to your face.”

“Whoosh. You can speak plain.” Sassinak smiled and held out her hand. “Yes, Mira; I’d like that. ‘S long as I get to tell you.”

And after that she enjoyed the little free time she had to share impressions with Mira. Meals in the officers’ mess were not as formal as those in the Academy, but they knew better than to put themselves forward. For the first month, Sassinak was on third shift rotation, which meant that she ate with other third shift officers; the captain usually kept a first-shift schedule. From what Mira told her, she wasn’t missing much. When she rotated to first-shift watch, and Communications as her primary duty, she found that Mira was right.

Instead of a lively discussion of the latest political scandal from Escalon or Contaigne, with encouragement to join in, the ensigns sat quietly as Captain Fargeon delivered brief, unemotional critiques of the ship’s performance. Sassinak grew to dread his quiet “There’s a little matter in Engineering ...” or whatever section he was about to shred.

The shift to Communications Section gave her some sense of contact with the outside world. Fleet vessels, unlike civilian ships, often stayed in deepspace for a standard year or more. None of the cadets had ever experienced that odd combination of isolation and confinement. Sassinak, remembering the slave barracks and the pirate vessel, found the huge, clean cruiser full of potential friends and allies an easy thing to take, but some did not.

Corfin, the ensign who slipped gradually into depression and then paranoia, had not been a particular friend of hers in the Academy, but when she recognized his withdrawal, she did her best to cheer him up. Nothing worked; finally his supervisor reported to the Medical Officer, and when treatment slowed, but didn’t stop, the progression, he was sedated, put in coldsleep, and stored for the duration, to be discharged as medically unfit for shipboard duty when they reached a Fleet facility.

“But why can’t they predict that?” asked Sassinak, in the group therapy session the Medical Officer insisted on. “Why can’t they pick them out, clear back in the first year, or before - “ Because Corfin had been in the Academy prep school, and had a Fleet medical record going back ten years or more.

“He was told of the possibility,” she was told, “it’s in his chart. But his father was career Fleet, died in a pod repair accident: the boy wanted to try. and the Board agreed to give him a chance. And it’s not wasted time, his or ours either. We have his record, to judge another by, and he’ll qualify for a downside Fleet job if he wants it.”

Sassinak couldn’t imagine anyone wanting it. To be stuck on one planet, or shipped from one to another by coldsleep cabinet? Horrible. Glad she had no such problems herself, she went back to her work eagerly.

It was, in fact, a prized assignment. The communications “shack” was a good-sized room that opened directly onto the bridge. Sassinak could look out and see the bridge crew: the officer of the deck in the command module - or, more often, standing behind it, overlooking the others from the narrow eminence that protruded into the bridge like a low stage. Of course she could not see it all; her own workstation cut off the view of the main screens and the weapons section. But she felt very much at the nerve-center of the cruiser’s life. Communications in the newly refitted heavy cruiser were a far sight from anything she’d been taught in the Academy.

Instead of the simple old dual system of sublight radio and FTL link, both useful only when the ship itself was in sublight space, they had five separate systems, each for use in a particular combination of events. Close-comm, used within thirty LM of the receiver, was essentially the same old sublight microwave relay that virtually all technical races developed early on.

Low-link, a low-power FTL link for use when they themselves were not on FTL drive, brought near- instantaneous communications within a single solar system, and short-lag comm to nearby star systems. Two new systems gave the capability for transmissions while in FTL flight: a sublight emergency channel, SOLEC, which allowed a computer-generated message to contact certain mapped nodes, and the high-power FTL link which transmitted to mapped stations. Even newer, still experimental and very secret, was the computer-enhanced FTL link to other Fleet vessels in FTL flight.

For each system, a separate set of protocols and codes determined which messages might be sent where, and by whom . . . and who could or should receive messages.

“One thing is, we don’t want the others to know what we’ve got,” said the Communications Chief. “So far, all the commercials in human space are using the old stuff: electromagnetic, lightspeed-radio and stuff like that -  and FTL link - really a low-link. Arbetronics is about to come out with a commercial version of the FTL sublight transmitter, but Fleet’s got a total lock on the high-link. Our people developed it; all that research was funded in house, and unless someone squeaks, it’s our baby. And the Fleet IFTL link even more so. You can see why.”

Sassinak certainly could. Until now. Fleet vessels had had to drop into sublight to pick up incoming messages - usually at mapped nodes, which made them entirely too predictable. Her instructors at the Academy had suspected that Fleet messages were being routinely stripped from the holding computers by both Company and unattached pirates. The IFTL link would make them independent of the nodes altogether. “Information,” the Comm Chief said. “That’s the power out here - who knows what? Now, ordinarily, in any disputed or unsecured sector, all crew messages are held for batch transmission, ordinary sublight radio, to the nearest mail facility. Anything serious - death, discharge, that kind of thing - can be put on the low-link with clearance from the Communications Officer, who may require the captain to sign off on it. The initiating officer’s code goes on each transmission. That means whoever authorized it, not who actually punched the button - right now you’re not booked to initiate any signals. The actual operator’s code also goes on it; whoever logs onto that system transmitter automatically gets hooked to the transmission. Incoming’s always accepted, and automatically dumped in a protected file unless its own security status requires even more. Accepting officer’s code - and that’s you, if you’re on duty right then - goes on it in the file. If it’s the usual mail-call batch, check with ‘Tenant Cardon; if he says it’s clear, then let the computer route it to individuals’ E-mail files.”

“What about other incoming?”

“Well, if it’s not a batch file message, if it’s a singleton for one person, you have to get authorization to move it to that individual’s file. If it’s a low-link message, those are always Fleet official business, and that means route to the captain first, but into his desk file, not his private E-mail file. We don’t get any incoming on high-link or SOLEC, so you don’t have to worry about them. Now if it’s something on the IFTL, that’s routed directly to the captain’s desk file. Pipe the captain, wherever he is, and no copies at all. Nothing in main computer. Clear?”

“Yes, sir. But do I still patch on my ID code, on an IFTL message?”

“Yes, of course. That’s always done.”

Some days later, Sassinak came into Communications just as the beeper rang off on the end of an incoming message burst. Cavery, who had already discovered the new ensign could do his job almost as well as he could, pointed at the big display. Sassinak scanned the grid and nodded.

“I’ll put it down,” she said.

“I’ve already keyed my code on it. Just the mail run from Stenus, nothing fancy.”

Sass flicked a few keys and watched the display. The computer broke each message batch into its component messages, and routed them automatically. The screen flickered far faster than she could read it. She liked the surreal geometries of the display anyway. It hovered on the edge of making sense, like math a little beyond her capability.

Suddenly something tugged at her mind, hard, and she jammed a finger on the controls. The display froze, halfway between signals, showing only the originating codes.

“Whatsit?” asked Cavery, looking over to see why the flickering had stopped.

“I don’t know. Something funny.”

“Funny! You’ve been here over six standard months and you’re surprised to find something funny?”

“No . . . not really.” Her voice softened as she peered at the screen. Then she saw it. Out of eighteen message fragments on the screen, two had the same originator codes, reduplicated four times each. That had made odd blocks of light on the screen, repeating blocks where she’d expected randomness. She looked over at Cavery. “What’s a quad duplication of originating blocks for?”

“A quad? Never saw one. Let’s take a look - “ He called up the reference system on his own screen. “What’s the code?”

Sassinak read it off, waited while he punched it in. He whistled. “Code itself is Fleet IG’s office . . . who the dickens is getting mail from the IG, I wonder. And quad duplication. That’s ...”

She heard his fingers on the keys, a soft clicking, and then another whistle. “I dunno. Ensign. Some kind of internal code, I’d guess, but it’s not in the book. Who’re they to?”

Sassinak read off the codes, and he looked them up.

“Huh. ‘Tenant Achael and Weapons Systems Officer . . . and that’s Tenant Achael. Tell you what. Ensign, someone sure wants to have Achael get that signal, whatever it is.” He gave her a strange, challenging look. “Want me to put a tag on it?”

“Mmm? No,” she said. Then more firmly, as he continued to look at her. “No, just the receiving code tag. It’s none of our business, anyway.”

Still, she couldn’t quite put it out of her mind. It wasn’t unknown for the IG to pull a surprise inspection - and not unheard of for a junior officer to be tipped off by a friend ahead of time. Or someone - presumably ‘Tenant Achael - might have made a complaint directly to the IG. That also happened. But she couldn’t leave it at that. She was responsible, whenever she was on duty, for spotting anything irregular in the Communications Section. Two messages from the IG’s office - two messages sent to the same person by different routes, and with an initiating code that wasn’t in the book. That was definitely irregular.

“Come in. Ensign,” said Commander Fargeon, seated as usual behind his desk. She wished it had been some other officer. “What is it?” he asked.

“An irregularity in incoming signals, sir.” Sassinak laid the hardcopy prints on his desk. “This came in with a regular mail batchfile. Two identical strips for Lieutenant Achael, one direct to his E-mail slot, and one to Weapons Officer. The same originating code, in the IG’s office, but repeated four times. And it’s in code ...” She let her voice trail off, seeing that Fargeon’s attention was caught. He picked up the prints and looked closely at them.

“Hmm. Did you decode it?”

“No, sir.” Sass managed not to sound aggrieved: he knew she knew that was strictly against regulations. She hadn’t done anything yet to make him think she was likely to break regs.

“Well.” Fargeon sat back, still staring at the prints. “It’s probably nothing. Ensign - a friend in the IG’s office, wanting to make sure he’d get the message - but you were quite right to bring it to my attention. Quite right.” By his tone, he didn’t think so - he sounded bored and irritable. Sassinak waited a moment. “And if anything of a similar nature should happen again, you should certainly tell me about it. Dismissed.”

Sassinak left his office unsatisfied. Something pricked her mind; she couldn’t quite figure it out, but it worried her constantly. Surely Fargeon, the most rigid of captains, couldn’t be involved in anything underhanded. And was it underhanded to be receiving messages from the IG? Not really.

She mentioned her inability to feel comfortable with Fargeon’s attitude to the Weft ensign, Jrain.

“No, we don’t think he’s bent,” was Jrain’s response. “He doesn’t like Wefts, but then he doesn’t like much of anyone he didn’t know in childhood. They’re pretty inbred, there on Bretagne. A bit like the Seti, in a way: they have very rigid ideas of right and wrong.”

“I thought the Seti were pretty loose,” said Sass. “Vandals and hellraisers, always willing to start a fight or gamble it all on one throw.”

“They are, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have their own rules. Did you know Seti won’t do any gene engineering?”

“I thought they were primitive in that field.”

“They are, but it’s because they want to be. They think it’s wrong to load the dice - genetic or otherwise. But that’s beside the point: what matters is that Fargeon is straight, so far as Wefts can tell. Even though he doesn’t like us. Wefts choose to serve on his ship, because he is fair.”

Only a few shipdays later, they had their first break in routine since leaving Base. The cruiser had orders to inspect a planet in the system which had generated conflicting reports: an EEC classification of “habitable; possibly suitable for limited colonization” and a more recent free scout’s comment of “dead - no hope.”

From orbit, the remote survey crews backed up the free scout’s report. No life, and no possibility of it without major terraforming. But Fleet apparently wanted a closer investigation, some idea of who had done it -  the Others, or what? Commander Fargeon himself chose the landing team: Sassinak went as communications officer, along with ten specialists and ten armed guards.

It was her first time since the training cruise at the Academy in fall protective gear. This time, a sergeant checked her seals and tanks, instead of an instructor. The air tasted “tanky” as they put it, and she had to remind herself where all the switches were. Carefully, very aware that this was no training exercise, she checked out the main and backup radios she’d be using on the surface, made sure that the recording taps were all open, the computer channels cleared for input.

She didn’t see the planet until the shuttle cleared the cruiser’s hull. It looked exactly like the teaching tapes of dead planets. Sassinak ignored it after a glance and ran another set of checks on her equipment. Although the planet had once had a breathable oxygen atmosphere, sustained by its biosphere, it had already skewed towards the reducing atmosphere common to unlivable worlds.

Besides, whatever had been used to kill its living component might still be active. They would be on tanks the entire time. She had hardly cleared the shuttle ramp on the surface, and felt the alien grit rasping along her bootsoles, when the landing team commander called a warning.

At first Sassinak could not judge the size or distance of the pyramidal objects that seemed to grow, like the targets in a computer simulation game, from nothing in the upper air. Certainly they didn’t follow the trajectories required by normal insystem drives, nor did they slow for the careful landing the shuttle pilot had made. Instead they hovered briefly overhead, then sank apparently straight down to rest firmly on the bare rock.

Sassinak reported this, hardly aware of doing it, so fascinated was she by the display. Half a dozen of the pyramids now sat, or lay, m an irregular array near the shuttle. Theks, the landing party commander had said; apart from teaching tapes, she had never seen a Thek and now she saw many in person, if such designation was accurate for those entities.

Another member of the landing party beeped the LPC and asked, “What do we do about them, sir?”

The LPC snorted, a splatter of sound in the suit corn units. “It’s more what are they going to do about us. For future reference, this looks to me like the beginnings of a Thek conference. Meanwhile, look your fill. Not many of us ephemerals get a chance to see one forming.”

His suit helmet tilted; Sassinak looked up, too. More of the pyramids appeared, sank, and landed nearby.

“If that’s what they’re doing,” LPC said after a brief silence, “we might as well go back in the shuttle and have something to eat. This is going to take longer than we’d planned. Inform the captain. Ensign.”

More and more pyramids arrived . . - . and then, without sound or warning, the ones already landed rose and joined the others to form a large, interlocking structure of complex geometry.

“That,” said the LPC, sounding impressed, “is a Thek cathedral. It’s big enough inside for this whole shuttle, and it lasts until they’re through. The Xenos think they’re linking minds. Humans who have been in one don’t talk about what happened.”

“Humans get drawn into one of those things?” someone asked, clearly unsettled by the notion.

“If a Thek calls, you come,” replied the LPC.

“How would you know a Thek wanted you?”

“Oh, there’s evidence that the Thek recognize individual humans from time to time ...”

“Their time?” a wise guy quipped.

“It does look a lot like the Academy Chapel right now,” said Sassinak softly. She didn’t think this was a time to be clever but people reacted differently to something they couldn’t quite understand.

“Most people think that. You’re lucky to see one, you know. Just try to keep out of one, if you’ve got the option. No one says ‘no’ to one Thek, let alone a whole flotilla.”

“Does anyone know more about them than the Academy tapes?”

“Did you take Advanced Alien Cultures? No? Well, it’s not that much help anyway. An allied alien race, co-founders of the Federation, we think. Wefts are one of their client races, although I don’t know why. They’re mineral, and they communicate very . . . very . . . slowly . . . with humans, if at all.” Although they were back in the shuttle now, the LPC kept his voice low. “Have a taste for transuranics, and they’re supposed to remember everything that ever happened to them, or a distant ancestor. Live a long time, but before they dissolve or harden, or whatever it is they do that corresponds with death, they transmit all their memories somehow. Maybe they’re telepathic with each other. For humans they use a computer interface or modulate sound waves. Without, as you can see, any mouth. Don’t ask me how; it’s not my field, and this is only the second time I’ve seen a Thek.”

Hours later, the Theks abruptly disassembled themselves and flew - or whatever it was - back into the darkening sky. The landing party, now thoroughly bored and stiff, grumbled back into action.

Sass followed them to the outcrop that had been chosen for primary sampling. They set to work as she relayed their results and comments back to the ship. Worklights glared, forming haloes at the edge of her vision as the dust rose, almost like smoke-haze in a bar, she thought, watching suited figures shift back and forth. Suddenly she stiffened, wholly alert, her heart racing. One of them - one of the helmeted blurs - she had seen before. Somewhere. Somewhere in a fight.

It came to her: the night of Abe’s murder, the night of the brawl in the bar. That same bold geometric pattern on the helmet had then been on the jacket of one of the street gang. That same flicking movement of the arm had - she closed her eyes a moment, now recognizing something she had never quite put together  - had aimed something at Abe.

Rage blurred her vision and thought. She opened her mouth to scream into the corn unit, but managed to clamp her teeth on the scream. Abe’s murderer here? In a Fleet uniform? She didn’t know all the landing party, but she could certainly find out whose helmet that was. And somehow, some way, she’d get her revenge.

Through the rest of the time on planet, she worked grimly, determined to hide her reactions until she found out just who that was, and why Abe had been killed. She wondered again about the mysterious duplicated message to ‘Tenant Achael. Could that be part of the same problem?

Back on the ship, Sass made no sudden moves. She had had time to think about her options. Going to Fargeon with a complaint that someone on the ship had murdered her guardian would get her a quick trip to the Medical Section for sedation. Querying the personnel files was against regulations, and even if she could get past the computer’s security systems, she risked leaving a trace of her search. Whoever it was would know that she was aware of something wrong. Even asking about the helmet’s assigned user might be risky, but she felt it was the least risky . . . and she had an idea.

Partly because of the Thek arrival and conference, the LPC had permitted more chatter on the circuits than usual, and Sass had already found it hard to tag each transmission with the correct originating code, as required. She had reason, therefore, to ask the rating in charge of the helmets for a list of occupants, “just to check on some of this stuff, and be sure I get the right words with the right person.”

The helmet she cared most about belonged to Tenant Achael. Gotcha, thought Sass, but kept a bright friendly smile on her face when she called him on the ship’s intercom. “Sorry to bother you, sir,” she began, “but I needed to check some of these transmissions ...”

“Couldn’t you have done that at the time?” he asked. He sounded gruff, and slightly wary. Sass tried to project innocent enthusiasm, and pushed all thought of Abe aside.

“Sorry, sir, but I was having trouble with the coded data link while the Theks were there.” This was in fact true, and she’d mentioned it to the LPC at the time, which meant she was covered if Achael checked. “The commander said that was more important ...”

“Very well, then. What is it?”

“At 1630, ship’s time, a conversation on the geochemical sulfur cycle and its relation to the fourth stage of reseeding . . . was it you, sir, or Specialist Nervin, who said ‘But that’s only if you consider the contribution of the bacterial substrate to be nominal.’ That’s just where the originating codes began to get tangled.” Just as she spoke, Sass pushed the capture button on her console, diverting Achael’s response into a sealed file she’d prepared. Highly illegal, but she would have need of it. And if the shielded tap she’d put together didn’t work, he’d hear the warning buzz on her speech first. He should react to it.

“Oh - “ He sounded less tense. ‘That was Nervin - he was telling me about the latest research from Zamroni. Apparently there’s some new evidence that shows a much greater contribution from the bacterial substrate in fourth stage. Have you read it?”

“No, sir.”

“Really. You were involved in installing the new environmental system, though, weren’t you? I’d gotten the idea that biosystems was your field.”

“No, sir,” said Sassinak firmly, guessing where he wanted to go with this. “I took command course: just general knowledge in the specialty fields. Frankly, sir, I found most of that environmental system over my head, and if it hadn’t been for Chief Erling - “

“I see. Well, does that give you enough to go on, or do you need something else?”

Sassinak asked two more questions, each quite reasonable since it involved a period with multiple transmissions at a time when her attention might have been on data relay. He answered freely, seemingly completely relaxed now, and Sassinak kept her own voice easy. He was still willing to chat. Then she cut him off, making herself sound reluctant. Did she want to meet for a drink in the mess next shift indeed!

I’ll drink at your funeral, she thought to herself, and dance on your grave, you murdering blackheart.