Timothy Zahn - Warhorse

“Well, have them map and store everything they can isolate, anyway,” Roman instructed.

“Yes, sir,” Ferrol said, and relayed the order.

Suppressing a grimace, Roman turned his attention back to the main display. He hadn’t been expecting them to find any gold nuggets, of course—after twenty years of contact with Tampies, the dust sweat must have been analyzed dozens of times, by people far more interested in making money from space horses than he was. But it would have been nice. “Lieutenant? Jump status?”

“One minute to Jump, sir,” she said. “Handler’s signaled ready; all ship systems show green.”

“Marlowe?”

“All inboard and outboard sensors on and recording.”

Marlowe reported. “If there’s anything that can be seen during a Jump, we’ll get it.”

Roman nodded. “All right,” he said, automatically bracing himself. “Let’s do it.”

Several months earlier, Roman had discovered that a space horse Jump was completely unspectacular to watch. Now, he discovered, it was equally unspectacular to experience.

There was no sensation. None at all. One second they were pulling 0.9 gee through the Tampies’ Kialinninni system, with a dull red sun off their port stern; the next second, they were doing exactly the same thing except with a dazzling white sun directly ahead. “Marlowe?” Roman asked.

“Nothing, Captain,” the other said, shaking his head. “No glitches or transitions on any of the inboard sensors. Outboard scanners… no transitional data on any of them, either.”

“What’s the time-quantum on the sensors, the standard half picosecond?” Roman asked.

“Better than that, sir,” Marlowe told him. “The manual claims 0.05 picosecond; I’d guess it closer to 0.1, myself.”

A tenth of a picosecond or less. Zero time, by any reasonable definition. “Thank you. Lieutenant Kennedy? We have Alpha located yet?”

“Working on it, sir,” Kennedy said. Her voice was its usual unawed self, as if Jumping space horses was something she did every week. “Computer’s got the ecliptic plane identified, and it’s calculating from the Tampies’ data where the planet ought to be. It’ll be a few more minutes.”

Roman nodded, keying his intercom as mention of the Tampies brought a sudden idea to mind. “Captain to Handler. Sso-ngu, are you able to speak?”

There was a short pause, and then the screen lit up with the Tampy’s image, his twisted face almost lost between the amplifier helmet and the red-white neckerchief. At least the sleeping animal wasn’t in view this way. “I hear, Rromaa,”

Sso-ngu said. “What is your wish?”

“Does Pegasus know where the planet is we’re heading for? Can it sense it, I mean, from here?”

The Tampy’s face was unreadable, as usual. “I do not know,” he whined. “I know space horses can see many distant stars and solid objects within telekene range; that is all.”

“Yeah,” Roman grunted, annoyed despite the fact he’d half expected that answer.

One of the more maddening Tampy characteristics was their steadfast and muleheaded refusal to ever speculate aloud unless and until they had absolute proof one way or the other. Pressing Sso-ngu on the subject would do nothing but pull increasingly obscure facts about space horses from him; and while that might be a useful exercise some day, at the moment Roman couldn’t be bothered. “Well, then, just stand by,” he told the Tampy. “We’ll have the location in a few minutes and feed the direction back there. Until then, you might as well have Pegasus stop our acceleration.”

“Your wishes are ours.”

Roman frowned at the screen, wondering if the Tampy was being sarcastic. But that was hardly likely. “Very good. Execute.”

He broke the connection; and an instant later grabbed reflexively at the arms of his chair as the Amity made a stomach-lurching transition to zero-gee.

Belatedly, the deceleration warning went on, and Roman swore under his breath.

Textbook fusion-drive deceleration/cool-down was a five-minute process; once again, old reflexes had betrayed him.

“Captain?” Ferrol cut into his embarrassment. The other’s voice was bland enough… but as Roman turned to face him he could see that the exec was privately enjoying his discomfiture. “Survey section reports they’ve taken the next dust sweat sample,” Ferrol continued. He cocked an eyebrow. “Assuming, that is, you still want them to bother analyzing the stuff.”

Roman eyed him. “Have you received any orders to the contrary, Commander?” he asked mildly.

The skin around Ferrol’s eyes tightened a bit. Perhaps, Roman thought, he’d been hoping for an overreaction. “No, sir,” he said, matching Roman’s tone.

“Then I’d say you could safely assume I still want the dust analyzed. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yes, sir,” Ferrol said, the first stirrings of awkwardness starting to appear at the corners of his lips. He was now on the defensive, and didn’t like it a bit. “I just thought the order might be worth checking on, after the negative results of the first sample.”

For a moment Roman just looked at him, watching the discomfort grow. “This is a research ship, Commander,” he said at last. “Its mission is to collect data; on Tampies, Tampy-human interactions, unexplored planets, space horse travel, and space horses themselves. All data, whether it looks to be immediately useful or not.”

“Understood, sir,” Ferrol said, his discomfort starting to edge into a simmering of anger.

“Good,” Roman nodded. He held the eye contact a second longer, then turned back to Marlowe. “Progress on the search for Alpha, Lieutenant?” he asked.

“Another minute, Captain,” the other said promptly, his voice the cadet-precise monotone of someone trying hard to keep himself inconspicuous. “We’ve got the theoretical position calculated, and we’re searching that immediate area with the scopes.”

Roman nodded and keyed his own displays to monitor the search. Thus are drawn the battle lines, he thought darkly. Ferrol had no real reason to care whether or not the survey section was wasting its time with Pegasus’ dust sweat, and he and everyone on the bridge knew it. The question had been nothing less than a challenge to Roman’s command authority, or his judgment, or both.

Or in other words, despite all of his high-sounding statements the previous day, Ferrol wasn’t going to be content with simply letting Amity’s crew make up their own minds about the Tampies on merit alone. He was going to make this into a personal confrontation between himself, the anti-Tampy realist, and Roman, the pro-Tampy military/political hack.

And if Marlowe’s reaction was anything to go by, Ferrol had at the very least managed to sour the atmosphere on the bridge a bit. A subtle but genuine form of damage.

“Got it, Captain,” Kennedy announced. “Bearing 96.4, 15.3. Distance, six hundred thousand kilometers.”

“Send the direction to the Tampies,” Roman told her. “Straight-line path, once we’ve come around, and have Sso-ngu keep acceleration at 0.9 gee.”

He would have thought Ferrol would be willing to quit while he was ahead. He was wrong. “Shall I compute turnover point for them, sir?” the other spoke up. “Their excuse for a computer may not be able to handle the calculation.”

“Let’s find out, shall we?” Roman countered. “Lieutenant, just give Sso-ngu the location and let the Tampies do the rest.” He cocked an eyebrow to Ferrol. “If they can, that is.”

They could, and did… and just under five hours later Pegasus eased the Amity smoothly into geosynchronous orbit around Alpha.

If Ferrol had won the first round of his private duel, the Tampies had clearly won the second.