"You must know something," Sue-ling pointed out. "After all, you named your ship for a pretty famous one."
Krake looked pleased. "Oh, you recognized The Golden Hind? Yes. That was kind of a romantic idea, I guess. I suppose I got it from my mother. She was English born, married my father in the first World War, and she used to tell me stories of the great Englishmen. Especially Sir Francis Drake."
"And you're Francis Krake with a 'K.'"
He grinned ruefully. "Not by accident—that's what she named me, you know, Francis Drake Krake, but it wasn't one of her best ideas. It sounded funny. I had a lot of trouble with the name in school."
She was laughing. "I can see why."
"He was a great man, though," Krake said loyally. "The greatest of the English sea captains. He roamed the world in his flimsy little sailing ships, hundreds of years before I was born. I wanted to be like him when I grew up." He looked shamefaced. "When they sent me to fly in the South Pacific I —I thought of myself as covering the same ground he had. I knew that I wasn't the first, like him, but I still had that vision of myself exploring unknown places—"
"Which is exacdy what you're doing now, Francis," she pointed out.
"Yes," he said, and stopped there.
"So youVe achieved your life's ambition," she went on, feeling as though she were floundering, not sure why, beginning to have an idea.
"Not all of it," he said. His eyes were searching hers, though he made no move to touch her again.
Sue-ling sighed. "Oh, hell," she whispered, and reached out for him, and then there was not much that needed to be said by either of them. As it turned out, Francis Krake had not forgotten everything about human women. Sue-ling began to wonder why she had never made love with a man with a beard before . . . then to wonder whether there was such a word as "trigamous" . . . and then she was not wondering at all, or even thinking on any conscious level, but concentrating on what was happening to her lips, limbs, pelvis and torso, almost hearing, but resolutely not listening to, the tiny voice that, shocked, was whispering to her that this would surely make trouble.
It surely did trouble one member of The Golden Hind's crew right away. When Moon Bunderan next saw Francis Krake and Sue-ling Quong together they were not touching each other, nor was what they said to each other unusual in any way, but Moon's first glimpse of them caused her to straighten her back and bite her lip.
Thrayl noticed immediately, of course. The Taur touched Moon's shoulder with his warm, sympathetic paw, rumbling affectionately. Moon took her eyes off the pair and looked up at him. "It's all right, Thrayl," she told him. Had to be all right, she went on to herself. She had no claim on the space captain, nor did she have any right to censure Sue-ling Quong for anything the woman chose to do. (But two men ought to be enough for anyone, she told herself rebelliously.) She wasn't even angry at either of them. Sue-ling was so beautiful, with her copper hair and wide blue eyes—any man would want her!
While she, Moon Bunderan, was so incurably young.
She sighed and abandoned the subject. She could see that she was not the only one who had detected something different between Sue-ling and the captain. Tensions were building up between Sork and Francis Krake. At least Sork was not drinking at present. He wasn't entirely sober, either, maybe, but perhaps there was a limit to what you could expect from him under these stressful conditions.
No matter what else went wrong, Moon told herself staunchly, she still had Thrayl, her best and most faithful friend, so she took herself away with the Taur, trying all over again to discover what his "songs" were all about.
Annoyingly, she could not get Thrayl to explain any of his actions. He didn't refuse to answer her questions—Moon was quite certain that the great, gentle Taur would refuse her nothing, ever. But his answers were worse than the questions themselves. The worst of the answers were to questions that began with a "why," for the only answer to those, ever, was, "The songs bade me, Moon. The songs are always true."
"But can't you tell me if they say what's going to happen to us? Do they say if the Turtles will ever find their Mother planet?"
The purple-blue eyes turned away from her. "The small-songs do not speak of that," he rumbled.
"Then why did you make us go on?"
"The smallsongs speak of that need, Moon. There is no reason for us to stop. There is no other place where we should be."
She shivered. "Damn ... it ... to .. . hell," she said, carefully spacing out the words, as Thrayl gazed down at her. "I didn't think it would be like this! I was hoping—oh," she said, trying to remember what all those vague hopes had been, "hoping, I guess, that I could just get you safe, and then go on with my life. I certainly didn't want to let you get slaughtered!"
"Your wish, Moon," the Taur lowed softly.
"I know it's my wish! It should have been your wish, too! What do you want from your life, Thrayl?"
The great eyes looked perplexed. "Want?"
"Don't you know what you want? I do! At least, I used to think I did." And then swiftly, as Thrayl's eyes seemed to twinkle down at her, "I don't mean a person. I mean for a career. I think I'd like to be a doctor, like Sue-ling Quong. She's a wonderful woman, and she does fine things. Saving lives, helping people—well, I mean, that's what I'd like if we ever get to where there are any people again. But—I don't know."
She thought for a moment, looking up at the terrible splendor of those uncountable blue-shifted suns all around them. Then she shook her head. "I don't want a hole drilled in my skull, though, and I don't know how I can ever do all of that any other way." She shook herself and smiled down at the Taur by her feet. "That's my ambition, anyway, Thrayl. What's yours?"
"Ambition," the Taur repeated, as though tasting an unfamiliar flavor in the word.
"I mean, what do you tpant?"
"I do not 'want,' Moon. I simply 'am.' With you, I am happy, Moon. There is no more to Svant.'"
When the source of the beacon was clear on their opticals the sight gladdened no eye. "It's just a ship, Captain," Marco reported. "There's no sign of any planet anywhere around."
"I told you," Sork Quintero remarked, to no one in particular—and no one responded.
"And it's just floating there," Daisy Fay added. "It's not in wave-drive, not even in mass-drive. Their scout ship's still attached, but we're not getting any signal from either ship. All we get is the beacon, and that's really low powered."
"Communicate with the vessel!" Litlun commanded.
"We already tried that, Facilitator," Marco said, sounding almost sympathetic. "It doesn't answer."
Chief Thunderbird was accepting no compassion from humans. He thrust his beaked face forward aggressively. "We will board and investigate this vessel," he declared.
The face on Marco's belly screen showed sudden excitement. "Can we do that, Captain?" he asked eagerly, eyes turning to Francis Krake. "You know you can't go out in space here yourself, not with all that hard radiation around, but the Turtles and I will be fine—"
"Not you," snapped Lidun. "One doubts your fitness for this environment, but we will suffer no harm. The intense radiation will allow us to go into anaerobic state, requiring no atmosphere." Both wild eyes swiveled to Krake. "We will board it with no humans accompanying us. This is a Brotherhood concern only."
And to that they would admit no argument. Regardless of protestations, with no further word for anyone, the two Turtles trooped into the scout ship, where it lay nesded in its bay along the belly of The Golden Hind. A moment later the people they had left behind felt the lurch as the scout pulled free.