“That ith no uthe, Lythander,” she said sternly. “You have been very wicked today!”
“I know I have, MyThara,” he said in penitence. But he added, anyway, “MyThara? Why is this the only picture I have of her?”
She hissed reprovingly at him, but he could see that she was taking the bait. “It ith not a Hakh’hli cuthtom to keep picturth of dead people,” she reminded him.
“But I’m not a Hakh’hli!”
“Indeed not,” she agreed, with sympathy creeping into her voice. “Well, thith ith the betht we could do. We found it in your father’th ‘wallet.’ It ith a good likeneth, though.”
“You know what she looked like?” he asked eagerly. “Of courthe,” said MyThara, and added considerately, “She wath very beautiful. For an Earth perthon, I mean. You look like her, I think.”
Sandy gave her a skeptical scowl. “What are you talking about? She’s so skinny, and I’m so fat!”
“You are not fat, Lythander. That ith muthle.”
“But look at the difference between us!”
“Of courthe there ith a differenthe. The differenthe ith becauthe you grew up here on the ship. Earth gravity ith only eight-twelfthth of ship normal. If your mother had come to uth ath a baby she would be a lot thtockier, too.”
“Yes,” Sandy said reasonably, “I see that, but—”
MyThara’s patience had worn out. “Thandy! Don’t think I don’t know what you are doing.”
“I beg your pardon?” he said, trying to look innocent.
She wrinkled her nose in sorrow, looking weary as well as disappointed. “Oh, Lythander,” she said, shuddering in sadness. “How could you?”
“That’s Lysander,” he snapped, to hurt her feelings.
“Ekthcuthe—I mean,” she said, angrily forcing out the sibilants, “excuse me. I am quite tired, dear Lysander, but I am also disappointed. May I tell you a tht—a story?”
“I don’t see any way of stopping you,” he said.
She looked at him sadly, but began her story. “Once, long ago, when I was only half-tailed, a hawkbee queen escaped. She flew into the thpatheth between the wallth and laid eggth—” she was lisping badly again, but Sandy didn’t have the heart to tell her—“and there wath a whole hawkbee netht that no one knew about. Then she laid queen eggth. When they hatched, the new queenth flew away, and new nethtth were thtarted, all out of thight. No one knew. Only people kept complaining. Where do all thethe hawkbeeth come from? What can they be living on, there aren’t any bugth here, are there?
“And then—” She paused, looking dire. “And then there came a time when the pilot wanted to make a courthe adjuthtment, and he fed hith inthructionth into the thentral command controller machine—and it didn’t rethpond! The ship didn’t change courthe!”
“Golly,” Lysander said.
His nurse waggled her tongue solemnly. “Golly, indeed,” she said. “Of courthe, the backup thythtemth took over, and the courthe change wath made. But when they checked out the mathter machine, it hada hawkbee netht in it! The netht had short-thircuited itth relayth! And, oh, Thandy, you would not believe how hard it wath, for twelveth of dayth after that, to thcan every thpan of the ductth and ventth and pathageth! Everyone wath working an extra twelfth-day every day until it wath cleaned up and the latht wild hawkbee netht wath wiped out. Do you thee the moral of the thtory?”
“Of course,” Sandy said promptly. “Or, no. Not exactly. What is it?”
She touched the tip of her tongue to his arm before she spoke. “The moral,” she said, “ith that even good thingth can do great harm if they are done in thecret. Now do you thee what I mean?”
“Certainly I do,” said Lysander, certain that she would go on to explain it anyway.
“Thertainly you do,” she agreed. “The moral ith that you mutht never keep thecretth from your thuperiorth.”
Sandy thought that over for a moment. “They keep secrets from me,” he objected. “They didn’t tell us why Theseus and the rest aren’t allowed to see us any more.”
“But that’th very different, ithn’t it? You don’t need to know thothe thingth. At leatht you don’t need it now, and when you do, you’ll be told. But the Theniorth need to know, becauthe they’re the oneth who have to make the dethisionth, after all. You don’t, do you?”
“No,” Lysander said thoughtfully. “I don’t make any decisions.” But he wished, all the same, that at least now and then he did.
“Tho,” she said, “when I am not here any longer, I hope you will remember what I’ve taught you.”
“Sure I will,” he said, and then did a double take. He scowled at her, half in anger, half in sudden alarm, and demanded, “What do you mean, when you’re not here?”
She waggled her jaw, like a shrug. “The freetherth have reported that my latht batch of eggth wath mothtly infertile. Tho I’ve retheived orderth to report for a termination examination,” she said.
Lysander was shocked. “MyThara!” he gasped. “They can’t do that!”
“Of courthe they can, Lythander,” she said firmly. “And I think I will fail it, my dear, and then, of courthe, it’th the titch’hik tankth for me.”
And of course they could, so when Lysander finally huddled with the rest of his cohort for sleep that night his drowsing thoughts were not of his return to Earth, or even of scantily clad human females. They were sad thoughts. MyThara had been a part of his life as long as he had had a life. He did not like to think of her being terminated.
Some of the fun was going out of the adventure.
Chapter 5
The great Hakh’hli ship is powered by three main drive engines. Each one of them is capable of shoving the ship through space at 1.4 G. For the sake of simple engineering prudence that seldom happens; ordinarily two are running, at fifty percent thrust, at all times, while the third is available for maintenance and, when rarely necessary, repairs. The great advantage of a strange-matter drive is that you need never run out of fuel. The problem is all the other way. Strange matter breeds. When ordinary matter is introduced into a lump of strange, the strange matter converts it into itself. This does not mean that if you drop a speck of strange matter onto the surface of the Earth it will turn the whole planet strange; it isn’t that easy. Strange matter repels the ordinary. To get past the force of that repulsion, the particles of ordinary matter must be fired into the strange matter with great energy; but that is what unavoidably happens in the Hakh’hli drive system. The result is that the longer the great ship flies, the more “fuel” it accumulates. The lumps at the heart of the Hakh’hli drive engines are each now six times as massive as when the motors first began to thrust. Because they are now so heavy there is that much more mass to accelerate and decelerate—which means more energy is needed—which means that the lumps are getting bigger faster. All the Hakh’hli need to feed it is ordinary matter, of which there is an infinity available in the universe; at every stop they tap asteroids, gas clouds, or the stellar winds for extra supplies—each particle of which adds one more particle to the mass of the ship. The Hakh’hli have known for centuries that they should soon divest themselves of some of that extra mass . . . but it is valuable mass. Like a miser clutching a bar of gold while he is drowning, they have clung to it. But they can’t cling to it much longer.
As the cohort gathered for shipwork the next morning they felt two momentary shifts in orientation, like small earth movements underfoot; it was the navigators making small course corrections as the ship decelerated toward its parking orbit around the planet Earth. It meant that the end of their journey was near. They all chattered excitedly about it, all but Sandy.