In the control room the Turtles had moved to one side, out of the way. Francis Krake was at one of the control boards, looking irritated but determined. Daisy Fay McQueen was at the other board. "Screens!" Krake called, and Daisy Fay touched a button with one of her long tentacles.
Sue-ling caught her breath. The walls around the control room blinked and disappeared! She was looking at a view of
the space around the Hind, almost as though there were a transparent band circling the control room.
"It's all right," Marco whispered, seeing her surprise. "Daisy's just turned on the external screens so we can see what's happening—there aren't any windows in a waveship, you know. But the screens are pretty good, aren't they? Now the captain's going to start the undocking."
So he did. "We go," called Krake, moving some toggles on his board.
Sue-ling grabbed at one of Marco's tentacles as the floor seemed to lurch under her. Outside, she saw the umbilical to the orbit station they were moored to. No longer! Tie clamps were parting. Lax cables dropped away and were automatically reeled in to the station. Set free from its moorings, The Golden Hind drifted clear.
Sue-ling winced in the sudden blaze of eye-straining light as the docks of the orbit station burned behind them in the light of the naked Sun, an ungainly tangle of tanks and valves and connected passageways.
"Board green," Daisy Fay called, and took her fingers off the board. Off in a corner Marco turned a smiling face up to Sue-ling Quong.
"That's it," he announced. "Now we'll start the mass-drive as soon as we drift clear of the structure. Then we have to move out of range of the station before we go into wave-drive. It'll take a little while."
Uncomfortably, Sue-ling remembered to let go of his tentacle. "Thanks," she said. "Is that all there is to it?"
"Well, all for just now," he said. One of his eyes turned, gazing around the room. "We haven't got you settled yet, have we? Would you like me to show you to your quarters? There'll be time before we go into wave-drive."
Sue-ling, grateful, said, "Oh, I'd like that—but I don't want to miss when we do that, you know."
Marco was chuckling. "You mean miss the experience of knowing when we go into wave-drive? Oh, I wouldn't worry about that, Sue-ling. You'll know, all right."
On the way to Sue-ling's quarters they passed the cubicle where Sork was busily listening in again to the old lecture chips. "Are you sure you don't mind doing this, Marco?" she asked. "Missing the lectures, I mean?"
The face that looked up at her from the belly screen looked a little embarrassed. "Well, a little," he admitted. "But Sork promised to let me borrow them later on. I don't sleep much, you know—don't have to sleep at all unless I specially want to. So I have the time. And actually I've been really fascinated by all that old stuff." He hesitated, then turned an eye to look at her. "I wished when I was a boy that I could be an astronomer," he confessed.
"You're better than any astronomer now. You actually go out and touch these other worlds," she told him, and wondered if she meant it.
And yet, funnily, she did. Sue-ling was beginning to believe that whatever had happened to Marco had not been all loss. With his eight tentacles to pull him along, he scampered through the walkways of the waveship like a mechanical dog.
And that was another strange—but, really, very nice!— sensarion for Sue-ling Quong, to be in the company of this funny-looking robot who said he was a human being. On balance, she was pleased to be with him rather than the others just now. As a practical matter, she wanted to know where she was going to sleep. As an emotional one, she was glad to be away from the constant, draining squabbles in the control room.
"You want to get to know these sections of the ship, Sue-ling, because you'll have to spend a lot of time here. At least while we're traveling on rocket drive you will," Marco called, one eye wobbling back to look at her as he led the way. "These parts are pretty well shielded, but even here you need to be careful sometimes, if there's a solar flare or anything."
"Solar flare?" Sue-ling repeated questioningly.
"That's a sudden flux of radiation from a star. Of course, you only have to worry about it when we're near one, like now. Usually when we're traveling we'll be in wave-drive and pretty far away from any star—it's a big universe, you know. Not that even a solar flare could do us any harm in wave-drive, for that matter. Anyway, the Sun isn't flaring right now." Marco gestured casually around with a couple of his tentacles. "All these areas are shielded against radiation. Daisy Fay and I don't care; we're not very sensitive to radiation. But Francis is. When the Turtles had the Hind they used these spaces for cargoes that might have been damaged by radiation."
"What kind of cargoes would that be?"
Marco's tentacles writhed, and the picture on the belly plate shrugged. "I would guess they were mostly living things of one kind or another. The Turtles wouldn't need shielding themselves, of course. They thrive on radiation. Now, take a deep breath, Sue-ling. Can you smell anything?" Both eyes turned to regard her.
Sue-ling sniffed thoughtfully. Then she nodded. There was indeed a faint, sour reek in the air. "I think so. Like something spoiled."
"That's it. I can't smell anything any more," Marco apologized, "so I can't tell for myself. But Francis used to complain that there was always a stink in this part of the ship. It comes from something the Turtles were hauling, I guess." He hesitated, the eyes roving around to study Sue-ling's face. Her eyes were fixed on him. "Is something the matter?"
Embarrassed, Sue-ling cleared her throat. "I was just wondering—" she began diffidently.
The machine-man laughed out loud. "I know what you were wondering. You want to know how I came to look this way, don't you?"
Sue-ling flushed. "I'm sorry, Marco. I don't want to be rude."
"Don't worry, Sue-ling. You won't hurt my feelings asking about it. I know what I look like. I can't say I enjoy it, really. But it's a lot better than being dead. And that was the only other possibility for me."
The face on the platen looked grim for a moment, then relaxed. "It was a long time ago," Marco said. "I guess Francis told you about the Turtle scout ship that was exploring the system, a couple of hundred years ago. . . ."
She nodded. "They found him adrift in the Coral Sea and picked him up."
"That's right. But Francis wasn't the only one they picked up." The tentacles and eyestalks moved restlessly, and the face on the belly plate looked somber. "I think the war frightened the Turtles," Marco said. "They don't like wars, because of what the Sh'shrane almost did to them a long time ago—"
"Sh'shrane?"
"They were the ones the Turtles did have a war with, long ago. I don't know much about it," he apologized. "It isn't a subject the Turtles like to talk about. But the Turtles lost that war, I think. I guess when they saw a good, big war going on on Earth, the Turtles couldn't help wondering whether this unruly new race of aliens—us—might be a problem for them. So they took samples. The samples were always individuals who were right at the point of death, like Daisy Fay and Francis and me. And they always did it where it was safe, in places where their scout ship could not be seen or detected by the primitive radar of the time."
"And that's all they took? Just the three of you?"
"Oh, no. Altogether they picked out twenty-two specimens—some of them corpses, some of them so near death that even the Turtles couldn't save them. We're just the only ones that survived. I was lucky—I guess," he finished.
Sue-ling listened attentively, particularly interested in the medical aspects of his story. "Francis was the only one in good health then. Of course, he was going to die of exposure if they hadn't taken him."