“You’re lucky,” the medician said again. “It was a coldsleep prep dose. If you’d hit the tank controls by mistake, you might have been in coldsleep immediately… or if you’d chosen to enter coldsleep early, the residual in your blood could have killed you. It didn’t completely clear until the third day.”
“The cabinet?” She remembered her fear of that featureless interior.
“Nothing: it was normal.” The medician looked at her curiously. “You’re in remarkably good shape, all things considered. That lump on the back of your head may still hurt, but there’s no damage. You’re not showing any signs of excessive anxiety - “
Sassinak slurped the last bit of broth and grinned. “I’m safe now. And not hungry. When can I get up?”
Before the medician could answer, a voice from the corridor said, “That’s Sass, all right! I can tell from here.”
“Not yet,” said the medician to Sass. Then, “Do you want visitors? I can easily tell them to let you rest.”
But Sassinak could hardly wait to find out what had happened so far. Mira, all trace of fashionable reserve gone, and Jrain, almost visibly shimmering into another shape in his excitement, were only too glad to tell her.
“I knew,” Mira began, “that it couldn’t have been your fault. You aren’t ever careless like that; you wouldn’t have hit the wrong button or anything. And of course you, of all people, wouldn’t cooperate with slavers or pirates.”
“But how did you find me without the beacon?”
Mira nodded at Jrain. “Your Weft friends did it. I don’t know if Jrain can explain it - he couldn’t to me - but they tracked you, somehow - “
“It was really the Ssli interface,” Jrain said. “You know how they can sense other vessels in FTL space - “
“Yes, but I wasn’t in FTL space after the pod went off, was I?”
“No, but it turns out they can reach beyond it, somehow. Doesn’t make any sense to me, and what Hssro calls the relevant equations I call gibberish. The pod is really too small to sense - like something small too far away to see - but we knew exactly when you’d been dumped, and the Ssli was able to - to do whatever it does in whatever direction that was. Then we Wefts sort of rode that probe, feeling our way toward you.”
“But you said - “
“Because you’re alive, and we know you. We had to go in our own shapes, of course - “ He frowned, and Sassinak tried to imagine the effect on Fargeon of all the crew’s Wefts in their own shape, clinging, no doubt, to the bulkheads of the Ssli contact chamber. Or on the bridge? She asked.
“He wasn’t pleased with us,” said Jrain, a reminiscent smile on his face. “We don’t usually clump on him, you know: he doesn’t like aliens much, though he tries to be fair. But when it came down to risking the loss of your pod, or giving in to Achael’s insinuations - “
“Kirtin changed right there in front of the captain,” put in Mira. “I thought he was going to choke. Then Basil and Jrain - “
“Ptak first: I was the last one,” Jrain put in.
“Whatever.” Mira shrugged away the correction and went on. “Can you imagine - this was in the big wardroom, and there they were all over the walls! I’d never seen more than one Weft changed at a time - “ She quirked an eyebrow at Sass.
“I have. It’s impressive, isn’t it?”
“Impressive! It’s crowded, is what it is, with these big spiky things all over the walls and ceiling.” Mira wrinkled her nose at Jrain, who grinned at her. “Not to mention all those eyes glittering out at you. And you never told me,” she said to Jrain, “that you’re telepaths in that shape. I thought you’d use a biolink to the computer or something.”
“There wasn’t time,” said Jrain.
“But what about the rendezvous with the EEC ship? Did we miss that?”
“No. What we decided - I mean - “ Mira looked sideways. “What the Wefts decided, was to let that go on, and then pick you up afterwards. It seemed risky to me - the further we went, the further away you were, the harder to find. It was a real gamble - “
“No,” said Jrain firmly and loudly. Mira stared at him, and Sassinak blinked. He took a long breath, and said more quietly, “We don’t gamble. We don’t ever gamble.”
“I didn’t mean like a poker game,” said Mira sharply. “But it was risky - “
“No.” As they looked at him, his form wavered, then steadied again. “I can’t explain. But you must not think - “ an earnest look at Sassinak “ - you must not think we gamble with your life, Sassinak. Never.”
“I - oh, all right, Jrain. You don’t gamble. But if one of you doesn’t get all this in order and tell me what happened, and where we are, and where Achael is, I’m going to crawl out of this bed and stuff you in a pod.”
Jrain, calmer now, sat on the end of her bed. “Achael is dead. That evidence you spoke to the captain about - remember?” Sassinak nodded. “Well, the captain had it put under guard. The pod, and the items removed, like the blood samples. Achael tried to get at it. He did get into the med lab, and destroyed one test printout before he was discovered. Then he broke for the docking bays - I think to steal a pod himself. When the guards spotted him, and he knew he was trapped, he killed himself. Had a poison capsule, apparently. The captain won’t tell us, not all the details, but we’ve had our ears open.” He patted Sass’s foot under the blanket. “At first the captain wanted to think that you and Achael were co-conspirators, but he couldn’t ignore the evidence… you know, Sass, you really did cram that pod with evidence. You did such a good job it was almost suspicious that way.”
“Fleet Intelligence is going to get the whole load dumped on them when we get back to Sector HQ,” Mira put in. “I heard Fargeon won’t even trust the IFTL link.”
“We’d better go,” said Jrain, suddenly looking nervous. “I think - I think the captain would rather you heard some of this from him…” He grabbed Mira’s arm and steered her away. Sassinak caught his unspoken thought… And he’s had quite enough to put up with from Wefts already this week.
“Ensign Sassinak.” Captain Fargeon’s severe face was set in slightly friendlier lines, Sassinak thought. She was, however, immediately conscious of every wrinkle of the bedclothes. Then he smiled. “You had a very narrow escape. Ensign, in more than one way. I understand you’ve been told about the drug that showed up in the blood samples?” Sassinak nodded, and he went on. “It was very good thinking to take those serial samples. Although normally - mmm - there’s nothing to commend in a young officer who manages to get sand- bagged and shanghaied, in this case you seem to have acted with unusual intelligence once you woke up. You have nothing to reproach yourself for. I know Lieutenant Cavery looks forward to your return to duty in Communications Section. Good day.”
Following that somewhat confusing speech, Sassinak lay quietly, wondering what Fargeon did think of her. She had been expecting praise, but realized that to the ship’s captain her entire escapade was one big head- ache. He’d had to leave his intended course to go looking for her, even if the guidance of Wefts and Ssli made that easier than usual. He’d had to worry about her motives, and the presence of unknown saboteurs in his ship; he’d had to assign someone else to cover her work; when they got back to Sector HQ, he was going to have to fill out a lot of forms, and spend a lot of time talking to Fleet Intelligence… all in all, she’d caused a lot of trouble by not being quicker in the evacuation drill. If she’d managed to turn and drop Achael with a bit of fancy hard-to-hand, she’d have saved everyone a lot of trouble. She shook her head at her own juvenile imagination. No more Carin Coldae: no more playing games. She’d done a good job with a bad situation, but she hadn’t managed to avoid the bad situation. She’d have to do better.