Timothy Zahn - Warhorse

“Commander?”

The voice was little more than a husky whisper, and for a long moment Ferrol wasn’t sure whether it was real or merely another of the surrealistic dreams that skittered continually through the deadly twilight consciousness that seemed to be suffocating the life out of him. But, “Commander?” the voice came again; and this time the dream also contained a gentle shaking of his arm. Wearily, resentfully, he dragged his eyes open.

It was Yamoto, her face drawn and shiny with sweat. “Commander, it’s my turn on duty,” she croaked.

“Ah,” Ferrol said. He took a careful breath, and immediately wished he hadn’t: the air was even more like the residue of a blast furnace than he remembered. “How’re things back there?” he asked, licking parched lips.

Yamoto shrugged. Like everyone else on the lander, she’d long since taken off her tunic, but Ferrol hardly noticed the view. “About the same as an hour ago,” she said. “People keep drifting in and out of consciousness.”

“Like me, for instance,” Ferrol nodded, fumbling with the straps pinning him to the helm chair. For some reason of shape or focus, the lander’s bow was about five degrees hotter than its stern, and he’d had to order that command duty up here be limited to an hour at a stretch.

That order not including the Tampies, of course. For a moment he gazed at them, huddled together at the very tip of the bow, and not for the first time it occurred to him that nothing he could have done with his needle gun could possibly have been worse than what they were going through at the moment.

Visible out the forward viewport beyond the Tampies, sheltering together in what there was of the lander’s shadow, were the lifeboats, looking for all the world like baby ducks beneath their mother’s wing. Briefly, Ferrol wondered how they were faring, then put it out of his mind. Exposed to slightly less of the godawful sunlight, and with a larger surface-to-volume ratio for dumping their excess heat, the lifeboats were probably doing at least as well as the lander. And even if they weren’t, there wasn’t anything he could do about it until the Amity returned.

If it ever did.

“Radiation counter’s gone out again,” Yamoto said.

Ferrol focused on the control panel, and with some effort found the proper display.

Sure enough, it was blank, its electronics having given up the ghost. “Last time I checked it we were way below any danger level,” he assured her, trying to remember exactly when he’d made that check. “That shell of matter the star blew off way back when was the worst of it—the levels started dropping as soon as that passed.” He gave the rest of the instruments a cursory check, noting that despite having rigged extra heat radiators the lander’s interior temperature had still risen another half degree in the past hour.

“Nothing more from the Amity?”

Ferrol waved his hands, the gesture half frustration and half resignation. “As long as they stick with the laser exclusively, how could there be? We were lucky to have picked up the one transmission from Shadrach’s moon.”

“I suppose so. Are we still broadcasting a homing—? Oh, there it is,” she broke off her question as her eyes found the radio display board.

“For all the range it’s got out there,” Ferrol grimaced. “They’ve probably got as good a chance of picking us up visually as they do of finding a beacon signal in all that static.”

Assuming, of course, that there would actually be someone out there to look for them…

“Commander?”

With an effort, Ferrol brought his attention back to her. “Sorry,” he muttered, reaching for the straps before remembering he’d already loosened them. “Never thought growing up in a planet’s temperate zone would someday turn out to be a handicap.” He got a grip on the chair arm, eased himself out of the squishy clutch of the molded contours—

He had just about worked himself free when there was a quiet beep from the radio display.

The panel beeped again before his numbed mind even registered the sound; and it wasn’t until the fourth beep that he realized that it was coming from the beacon’s transponder.

The Amity had arrived.

He dived for the panel, fingers fumbling with the main transceiver switch. “Lander to Amity,” he called toward the microphone, hoping fervently that the visual display was still operational. “Lander to Amity.”

“Amity to lander,” Roman’s voice boomed out of the speaker. “Commander Ferrol?”

“Yes, Captain,” Ferrol said. Behind him, he could hear a sudden stirring as crewers on the brink of heatstroke dragged themselves awake to the realization that the long ordeal was almost over. “It’s good to hear your voice, sir.”

“Same here,” Roman said. Belatedly, the visual came on; and through the static Ferrol could see the frown on the captain’s face. “We have visual contact with you now…” His voice hesitated, and the frown deepened noticeably.

“You’re wondering about Pegasus?” Ferrol prompted.

Roman looked briefly to the side, to where Marlowe was probably saying something. “We seem to be having some problem with our scale program,” he told Ferrol.

Ferrol shook his head. “No, sir, it’s not the scale,” he assured the other. “Pegasus is gone, all right. Jumped about fifty-three hours ago.”

Roman’s frown shifted a fraction, toward what was probably the scanner repeater display. “Then what—?”

“—is that thing out there?” Ferrol finished for him. “A farewell gift from Pegasus, actually.” He looked at the aft-camera display, at the short cylindrical shape framed aura-style by the sunlight behind it. “Captain; meet Junior. Pegasus’ calf.”

He looked back at Roman… and thanked whichever gods had permitted the visual display to function. The expression on the captain’s face was all he could have hoped for.

For the tenth time—Ferrol had kept track—the tiny needle poked not quite unobstrusively into his skin; and then, thankfully, it was all over.

“That’s the last of them,” Amity’s medical officer said briskly, throwing the release lever and swinging up the top of the automed. “Ten precancerous growths, Commander. Not bad, really, considering all the radiation exposure you had out there. We got them all, of course.”

“Glad to hear it,” Ferrol said, getting gingerly out of the shiny box and pulling on his pants. The worst thing about automeds, he’d often thought—aside from their resemblance to high tech coffins—was the way the damn things demanded the total surrender of one’s dignity. “I’d hate to have put up with those needles for nothing. I gather there wasn’t anything deeper?”

“Not that we could detect,” the doctor assured him. “Though we’ll be doing followup tests on you for the next few weeks, just to be sure. Or, rather, someone will be doing them,” he amended, a bit wistfully.

“Right,” Ferrol grunted, busying himself with the fasteners on his tunic. Of course the other would be sorry that the Amity’s mission was nearly over—he’d always been one of the more simpering pro-Tampy types aboard. “You’ll excuse me; the captain left orders I was to report to him as soon as I was finished here.”

He escaped to the corridor, and air not quite so thick with maudlin sentiment, and made his way forward to Roman’s office.

“Commander,” the other nodded gravely as Ferrol entered. “I don’t suppose I have to tell you that you’ve made it into the history books.”

“Amity has, anyway,” Ferrol demurred politely. “I don’t expect to be more than a referenced footnote, myself.”

“You’re too modest,” Roman said. His eyes seemed to search Ferrol’s face. “The man in charge of the first captive breeding of a space horse will certainly rate more than just a footnote.”