Part 10 (1/2)
To Pyre it was still a mystery why she was aboard this mission. Arguments about high Council representation notwithstanding, it seemed to him incredible that
Governor-General Stiggur should allow a woman on what was looking more and more like a military mission. Pyre's att.i.tudes were as healthy as anyone else's, and he had no qualms whatsoever about female doctors or engineers; but warfare was different, and Stiggur with his roots back in the Dominion should feel that even more strongly than Pyre did. Which led immediately to the conclusion that the decision had been purely political... which led even faster to the question of why he, Pyre, was aboard.
And that was the really troublesome one. Pyre hadn't had as much access to closed-door information lately as he'd had when he'd been living near the
Moreaus, but even so it was pretty obvious that Stiggur wouldn't have let Telek come unless he expected her report and recommendations on Qasama to fall more or less in line with his own expectations. Pyre was a good friend of Jonny Moreau, who had both as governor and governor emeritus locked horns regularly with
Telek... and yet it was Pyre's team she'd asked to observe in the field back on
Aventine; and it was Pyre whose cost/manpower estimates she'd solicited for presentation to the governors; and it was Pyre she'd sponsored to be Cobra team leader on this mission.
Why? Did she expect to flatter him into support for her more aggressive stance on the Qasama issue? To offer him one last chance at real Cobra action before the implant-related diseases began their slow but inevitable crippling of his body, in the hope that, in grat.i.tude, he'd become a political ally when he retired to advisory positions on the sidelines? Or had she simply concluded he was the best man for the job and to h.e.l.l just this once with politics?
He didn't know the answer... and it quickly became clear he wasn't going to figure it out en route. Telek's field biology background had left her little prepared for the Dewdrop's overcrowded zoo, and though she gamely tried to maintain both minimal sociability and her responsibilities as official head of the mission, it was obvious there weren't going to be any opportunities to sound her out properly on her thoughts and motivations. Perhaps when they reached
Qasama and the contact team disembarked there'd be time for that. a.s.suming there was time for anything at all.
So he spent his time working out contingency plans with his team, renewing his friends.h.i.+p with the Moreau twins, and listening to the dull background drone of the Dewdrop's engines as he tried to think of anything he'd forgotten. The nightmares of sudden, overwhelming disaster he did his best to ignore.
Taken at low-power, high-efficiency speeds, the forty-five light-years to Qasama would have run them a shade over a month; at the Dewdrop's top speed, with frequent refueling stops at Troft systems, they could have made it in six days.
Captain Reson F'ahl chose a reasonably conservative middle course, both out of fears for the Dewdrop's aging systems and also-Pyre suspected-out of an old, lingering distrust of the Trofts.
So for fifteen days they were cooped up in the blackness of hypers.p.a.ce, with only the deep-s.p.a.ce refueling stops every five days to break the viewport's monotony... and on the sixteenth day they arrived at Qasama.
Purists had claimed for centuries that no photographic emulsion, holographic trace-record, or computerized visual reproduction ever made had quite the same range and power as the human eye. Intellectually, Joshua tended to agree; but on a more visceral level he discovered it for the first time in gazing out his stateroom viewport.
The poets were indeed right: there were few sights more majestic than that of an entire world spinning slowly and serenely beneath you.
Standing with his face practically welded to the small triple-plate plastic oval, he didn't even notice anyone had come into the room behind him until
Justin said, ”You going to build a nest there?”
He didn't bother to turn around. ”Go find your own viewport. I've got land-use rights on this one.”
”Come on-move,” Justin said, tugging with token force on his arm. ”Aren't you supposed to be with Yuri and the others anyway?”
Joshua waved a hand in the general direction of the intercom display. ”There's no room up there for anyone bigger than a hamster-oh, all right.” Snorting feigned exasperation, he stepped aside. Justin took his place at the viewport... and Joshua waited for the other's first awe-filled whistle before turning toward the intercom.
The display showed the room euphemistically called the lounge-and ”crowded” was far too mild a term for it. Packed in among the various displays and equipment monitors were Yuri Cerenkov, the scientists Christopher and Nnamdi, and Governor
Telek. Back near the viewport, almost out of the intercom camera's range, Pyre and Decker York stood together, occasionally sharing inaudible comments. Joshua turned the volume up a bit, just in time to catch Nnamdi's thoughtful snort.
”I'm sorry, but I simply don't see what in blazes the Trofts are so worried about,” he said, apparently to the room at large. ”How can a village-level society be a threat to anyone outside its own atmosphere?”
”Let's show a little patience, shall we?” Telek said, not looking up from her own bank of displays. ”We haven't even finished a complete orbit yet. All the high-tech cities may be on the other side.”
”It's not just the matter of technology, Governor,” Nnamdi countered. ”The population density is too low to be consistent with an advanced society.”
”That's anthropomorphic thinking,” Telek shook her head. ”If their birth rate's low enough and they like lots of room around them they could still be high-tech.