Harry Turtledove: Homeward Bound

“What is that?” Ttomalss asked cautiously-or perhaps fearfully was the better word.

“If the Big Uglies are working on cold sleep, what are they likely to do with it?” Kassquit asked. Her facial features stayed immobile. She had never learned the expressions most Big Uglies used to show emotion. Those cues required echoes during early hatchlinghood, echoes Ttomalss had been unable to give her. If she could have, though, she would have smiled a nasty smile. “What else but try to fly from star to star? If they reach Home, would it not be well to have someone there with at least some understanding and firsthand experience of them?”

She waited. Ttomalss made small, unhappy hissing noises. “I had not considered that,” he admitted at last. “I do not believe anyone on Tosev 3 has considered it-not in that context, at any rate. You may well be right. If the Big Uglies do reach Home, we would be better off having individuals there who are familiar with them from something other than data transmissions across light-years of space. The males and females back on Home at present plainly do not qualify.”

“Then you agree to support my petition to travel to Home?” Kassquit asked, eagerness in her voice if not on her face.

“If-I repeat, if — the Big Uglies’ techniques for cold sleep prove both effective and safe, then perhaps this may be a justifiable risk.” Ttomalss did not sound as if he wanted to commit himself to anything.

Kassquit knew she had to pin him down if she possibly could. “You will support my petition?” she asked again, more sharply this time. “Please come straight out and tell me what you will do, superior sir.”

That was plainly the last thing Ttomalss wanted to do. At last, with obvious reluctance, he made the affirmative gesture. “Very well. I will do this. But you must see that I do it much more for the sake of the Race and for Home than for your personal, petty-I might even say selfish-reasons.”

“Of course, superior sir.” Kassquit didn’t care why Ttomalss was doing as she wanted. She only cared that he was doing it. “Whatever your reasons, I thank you.”

“Make your petition. It will have my full endorsement,” Ttomalss said. “Is there anything else?”

“No, superior sir.” Kassquit knew a dismissal when she heard one. She hurried out of Ttomalss’ office. Inside, her liver was singing. The Big Uglies spoke of the heart as the center of emotion, but she was too much under the influence of the Race’s language-the only one she spoke-to worry about that foolish conceit.

Even after she submitted her petition, wheels turned slowly. More than a year of the Race went by before it was finally approved. She watched Tosev 3 from orbit. She had never visited the planet on which she’d been hatched. She did not think she ever would. Because she’d been exposed to so few Tosevite illnesses when young, her body had inadequate defenses against them. What would have been a trivial illness or no illness at all for the average wild Big Ugly might have killed her.

Another snag developed when the American Big Uglies proved reluctant to send a physician up to her starship to give her the treatment she needed. At last, though, they were persuaded. Kassquit didn’t know what went into the process of persuasion, but it finally worked.

“So you will be going to Home, will you?” the Tosevite asked. Even in the warmth of the starship-the Race naturally heated the interior to their standards of comfort, which were hotter than most Tosevites cared for-he wore white cloth wrappings. He also wore a cloth mask, to keep from infecting her with microorganisms. He spoke the language of the Race reasonably well. These days, most educated Tosevites did.

“I hope so, yes,” she answered.

“All right.” He bobbed his head up and down, the Big Uglies’ equivalent of the affirmative gesture. “Our treatment is based on the one the Race uses. I will leave detailed instructions with the Race on how to care for you, what injections to give you when you are revived, the proper temperature at which to store you, and so on. And I will wish you luck. I hope this works. We are still learning, you know.”

“Yes, I understand that,” Kassquit said. “To see Home, I would take almost any risk. I am not afraid. Do what you need to do.” She lay down on the sleeping mat.

The Race gave injections with a high-pressure spray that painlessly penetrated scaly hides. Big Uglies used hollow needles. They stung. Kassquit started to tell the physician as much, but the world around her slowed down and it no longer seemed important. The fluorescent lights overhead blurred and then went dark.

Glen Johnson and Mickey Flynn floated in the Lewis and Clark ’s control room. The glass in the broad view windows had been treated to kill reflections, leaving them with a splendid view of the local asteroids-quite a few of which now sported American installations, or at least motors adequate to swing them out of orbit-and of far more stars than they would have seen from beneath Earth’s thick mantle of air. The sky was black-not just blue-black, but sable absolute.

“We’ve spent a hell of a lot of time out here,” Johnson remarked, apropos of nothing in particular. He was a lean man of not quite sixty; because he’d spent the past twenty years weightless, his skin hadn’t wrinkled and sagged the way it would have in a gravity field. Of course, everything came at a price. If he had to endure much in the way of gravity now, it would kill him in short order.

“We volunteered,” Flynn replied. He’d been round under gravity; he was rounder now, but he also did not sag so much. With dignity, he corrected himself: “I volunteered, anyhow. You stowed away.”

“I was shanghaied.” Johnson had been saying that ever since he boarded the Lewis and Clark. The ship had still been in Earth orbit then, and he’d faked a malfunction in his orbital patrol craft to give himself a plausible excuse for finding out what was going on with it. The only trouble was, the commandant had thought he was a spy, had kept him aboard to make sure he couldn’t possibly report to anyone, and hadn’t trusted him from that day to this.

Flynn sent him a bland, Buddhalike stare-except the Buddha had surely had a lot less original sin dancing in his eyes than Mickey Flynn did. “And what would you have done if you hadn’t been?” he inquired. “Something honest, perhaps? Give me leave to doubt.”

Before Johnson could muster the high dudgeon such a remark demanded, the intercom in the ceiling blared out, “Colonel Johnson, report to the commandant’s office immediately! Colonel Glen Johnson, report to the commandant’s office immediately!”

“There, you see?” Flynn said. “He’s finally caught you with your hand in the cookie jar. Out the air lock you go, without benefit of spacesuit or scooter. It’s been nice knowing you. Can I have that pint of bourbon you’ve got stashed away?”

“Ha! Don’t I wish!” Johnson exclaimed. Ships from Earth were few and far between. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d tasted whiskey. Every so often, someone did cook up some unofficial alcohol-highly against regulations-aboard the Lewis and Clark. It was good, but it wasn’t the same.

“Colonel Johnson, report to Lieutenant General Healey’s office immediately!” The intercom wasn’t going to let up. “Colonel Glen Johnson, report to Lieutenant General Healey’s office immediately!”

“Well, I’m off,” Johnson said resignedly.

“I knew that,” Flynn replied, imperturbable as usual.

With a snort, Johnson glided out of the control room and toward the commandant’s lair near the heart of the ship. The corridors had handholds to let crewfolk brachiate along them. The Lewis and Clark had never carried bananas, which struck Johnson as a shame. Mirrors where corridors intersected helped stop collisions, a good thing-you could swing along at quite a clip, fast enough to make running into somebody else also going at top speed no joke at all.