Anne Mccaffrey
First Warning
ISBN 0-06-052538-X
This book is for Jason and Cynthia Scarborough, with love
Acknowledgments
We'd like to thank Dr. Christine Hale, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough's epidemiologist neighbor, who helped us find a way to destroy much of the universe as we might come to know it. As usual, we also must thank Richard Reaser, our science, salvage, and stealthy stuff consultant, and Andy Logan for sustenance. And, as always, we owe thanks to our editors Denise Little and Diana Gill for all of their patience and hard work.
Chapter 1
Until the Condor encountered the derelict spaceship drifting through deep space, Khorii couldn't understand why the fact that she was taking her first long space voyage had caused so much fuss back home. She had flown on the Condor plenty of times when her family shuttled between her home planet of Vhiliinyar and the Moon of Opportunity (known as MOO to everyone except Uncle Hafiz and Aunt Karina now). This trip was just like those ones, only longer, although she did like seeing all the new solar systems and such that Mother and Father, Captain Becker, and her android friend Elviiz's dad Maak were so eager to point out to her.
When Khorii's parents decided to take her on a trip into Federation space to see her mother's human friends and family, Khorii had been afraid it would be really boring. But Mother had her reasons for taking her along. Mother's adoptive human fathers had come to visit when Khorii was younger, but she barely remembered them, and she had not yet met their mates and children. Mother said it was time and past that Khorii got to know them. Mother also wanted Khorii to see something of the worlds that she herself had known as a girl.
But Khorii was on her way, even though her Linyaari playmates, both of them, thought the prospect of a trip into a whole new sector of space was pretty scary. That was despite the fact that they were starborn themselves, and used to meeting other races.
Khorii was scared, too. But not for the same reasons her friends were. She was scared that it would be absolutely mind-numbingly dull, what with all of the adults talking about the Good Old Days and about people who were dead before she was born, as Linyaari adults seemed to do all the time.
At the same time she was worrying about being bored, she also thought that this trip could be thrilling.
But now, sitting in her berth and staring out through her viewscreen into space, she was not yet thrilled, and she wondered how it could have possibly been night for so long. Days and weeks and months full of nothing but darkness. Stars were everywhere, but not one of them turned the morning sky violet, as it was at home when Our Star rose over the mountains.
She understood, of course, the physics of space and light. She knew that it was Vhiliinyar's atmosphere that produced the beautiful skies she longed to see again, and not Our Star alone. Still, she couldn't help feeling that if she touched the tip of her horn to the screen, it might somehow purify the vastness and depth that had swallowed the ship and with it her family and friends, and turn the airless blackness into the light and sweet-smelling air she craved.
She felt a nudge under her arm and lifted it to see her cat Khiindi staring at her while his sides rose and fell with the passion of his purrs. Khiindi loved it out here. Well, he would. Cats loved nothing better than sleeping. Endless nights were good for sleeping. Of course, cats loved sunlight, too, but Khiindi just curled up under the nearest lamp and pretended it was his own personal sun.
Khorii sighed. How she longed to set the ship down someplace larger than the Condor, somewhere outside, where she could graze and run and play. And, right now, except for Khiindi, she was lonely. Her foster brother, Elviiz, usually annoyed her by being underfoot and in her way every chance he got, but now that he was closeted with his android father/creator, Maak, Khorii felt abandoned. Her parents, Acorna and Aari, were in their own berth, sleeping after a long watch. They had proposed this trip as a way to spend more time with their family after a long series of missions that had taken them away from Vhiliinyar, but at the moment it felt to Khorii that they were spending their time exclusively in each other's company. She was feeling decidedly left out.
Khorii stretched, yawned, and decided to go see what was happening on the bridge. Maybe she could get Captain Becker, her beloved Uncle Joh, to play a game with her or teach her more about gonzo physics.
When she got to the deck, it seemed that Uncle Joh also had better things to do. He was bouncing up and down in the command seat, alternately wringing his hands and clapping them together before spreading them over the various controls of his scanner array like a concert pianist about to pound out a sonata in one of the cultural vids Mother insisted she watch.
Drawing nearer to her human friend, she saw a spot of drool beaded at the side of his mouth. Becker looked exactly like RK, the ship's feline first mate, when RK was contemplating a particularly tasty specimen of vermin. Khorii rushed forward, worried that Uncle Joh, who was of course quite aged, being a contemporary of her parents, was having some kind of seizure. But then she saw the reflection of his eyes glittering avariciously in three of the scanner arrays and knew he was fine. What he was wearing was simply a heightened version of his characteristic "Yahoo, salvage!" expression: a mixture of enthusiasm, delight, and greed.
The Condor was a ship dedicated to collecting and "recycling" or selling salvage, and Uncle Joh loved his business. There was very little else that could thrill him so much as a bit of wreckage or refuse. It appeared that he had a particularly luscious bit of salvage in sight this time.
"What is it?" she asked him, sliding into her usual seat beside the captain. She had lived only six Linyaari years, the equivalent of twelve Standard years for a humanoid child, and was somewhat short for her age, even among her Linyaari friends. Khiindi hopped onto the headrest of her chair, which rose a foot or so above the top of her head.
RK, whose given name was Roadkill, was a huge brindled black and gray, very furry, Makahomian Temple Cat. RK had been sleeping in a similar position on the chair above Uncle Joh's head. The feline first mate had been with Uncle Joh since before Khorii was born. Upon seeing Khiindi, RK opened one eye and growled. Khiindi, a gray-striped cat who was large, though not as large as RK, gave a pathetic mew in return. RK was Khiindi's sire, or at least the Makahomian priesthood suspected that he was, and Khiindi always seemed hurt by the older cat's animosity. Khorii reached up and, with one of her three-fingered, single-knuckled hands, stroked Khiindi's fluffy gray tail as it flipped in an agitated fashion against the small, spiraling opalescent horn nestling among the short pink-and-purple-streaked silver curls of her mane. Normally, as a space-faring Linyaari, she should have had silver curls, but she'd been experimenting with dyes to make her look somewhat different from every other star-clad Linyaari person her age.
Like her, every other Linyaari who'd been into space was white-skinned, silver-maned, opal- or golden-horned, and had feathery silver curls growing from head and neck and halfway down the spine. Another ridge of curls tickled the back of her legs from knee to ankle, where her feet ended in two hard, hooflike toes. The dye Khorii had used was pale and sort of messy-looking now, but it had been pretty when she first did it. Aunt Maati said that Khorii's mother had done something similar when she first came to narhii-Vhiliinyar, the new homeworld of the Linyaari that Khorri's mother had helped create.
After a moment of fiddling with the controls that sent the Condor in pursuit of its prey, her Uncle Joh leaned back in the chair and pointed to the scanners. "Khorii, cutie, I am so glad you are keeping me company on this historic occasion. Lookee there!"