Harry Turtledove: 3 x T

"Destroy that race," Solut Mek Kem answered at once, his own voice as flat as the Spanglish words that came from the translator. "It has happened before. With the contemptible popguns in your vessel, however, you do not enjoy that option. You exist here on sufferance, not through strength. Remember it."

"We're here because Foitani thought we could solve a problem that baffled them, and the Harold Meeker is only a trading vessel, not a warship. I suggest you remember that, if you ever go into human space. We're better able to protect ourselves now than when you kidnapped those primitive ancestors of ours," Greenberg said.

Jennifer clapped her hands. From all she'd seen, matching the Foitani arrogance for arrogance was the best way to make them act in a humanly reasonable fashion. They could be made to respect power. Weakness they simply trampled.

Solut Mek Kem said, "I repeat, this matter is subject to discussion."

"Then let us come up to Vengeance and discuss it," Greenberg said. "I might point out that if it hadn't been for us, your ship would still be a tower and you would still be sleeping and impotent inside it." And the war on Gilver would have only two sides, not a good potential for three, Jennifer thought.

"A race that relies on the gratitude of others to cause them to act on its behalf is well on the way to extinction," Solut Mek Kem observed. "Nevertheless, you may come?in your own ship, not one furnished by either race of vodranet with which we have had the misfortune to become acquainted. Make note that I do this from considerations of my own advantage, not out of sentimentality." The screen blanked.

Greenberg called the research base. "I presume you were monitoring our call to the Great Ones' ship. They've given us permission. If you start shooting at us, it might annoy them. You don't want that, do you?" To Jennifer, he muttered under his breath, "I know damn well I don't."

The Foitani needed a couple of minutes to reply. Finally, a translated voice came back to the Harold Meeker. "You have our consent to undertake this mission, but you shall not under any circumstances enter into agreements binding up Odern in any way."

"We won't, Thegun Thegun Nug," Greenberg promised.

Another pause. "One day I must learn how I am so readily identifiable."

"It's your charming personality, Thegun Thegun Nug," Greenberg said. "What else could it possibly be?"

"Undoubtedly you are correct," Thegun Thegun Nug said. "Out." Jennifer and Greenberg tried to hold it in, but they both started laughing at the same time.

Greenberg began talking with the Harold Meeker 's computer, making sure the ship was ready for space. Jennifer waited for a furious call from Voskop W Wurd. The Rof Golani knew how to delegate authority, however, for the furious call that came was from his aide Yulvot L Real, accusing her and Greenberg of selling out to the perfidious kwopillot and threatening to shoot them down if they took off.

"If you do that, you risk starting the war with the Great Ones again," Jennifer pointed out. "Not only that, you might antagonize the Foitani from Odern. Besides, we're just humans, remember? Do you expect any self-respecting Foitani to take seriously anything we say?"

"Probably not," Yulvot L Reat admitted, "nor do you deserve serious regard."

"Thank you so much, Yulvot L Reat," Jennifer said. "Out."

"You're getting to be able to handle them pretty well," Greenberg said.

"Bernard, I don't think that's necessarily a compliment. I just want to get into space again."

"Me, too. Stuck on the surface of Gilver like this, I've felt like a bug with a shoe poised over it. Once I'm flying on my own power, at least I'll have the illusion of being a free agent again, even if I'll still be under the guns of Vengeance. "

The Harold Meeker lifted off a few minutes later. Jennifer watched the Foitani research base fall away. The screen's view expanded to pick up the Great Unknown. The precinct looked strange and incomplete without the central tower, as if all roads led, not to Rome, but to nowhere.

The sky quickly darkened toward black. Stars came out. Jennifer looked at the radar pickup. On the way in to Gilver, it had shown a hideously jumbled swarm of ships and missiles, their tracks and signals jammed to provide them the greatest possible protection. Now only one artificial object swung in space near Gilver: the Vengeance. On radar, it was only the palest of flickering ghosts.

"I'm just glad to see it at all," Greenberg said when Jennifer remarked on that. "If we couldn't pick it up, that would be bad news for human space."

A Great One sent a peremptory signal. "Approach slowly and directly, or you will be destroyed without further warning."

Jennifer acknowledged, then shut down the communicator and sighed. "They're such a charming race. I don't know what those CroMagnon people will do once we get them back, but we have to do it. The more I think, the more it looks like I couldn't live with myself if I just left them there in that Foitani database."

"I know what you mean," Greenberg answered. "At first, I didn't worry too much about it?they were in storage and weren't aware of anything that happened around them. But if the Foitani can call them up again and again, do what they want with them every time?test them to destruction if they've a mind to, which they probably do?I think we have to get a live copy back, and get the Great Ones to wipe the files so they can't make any more."

"Sounds good to me," Jennifer agreed. She didn't know what sort of deal they would have to make with the Great Ones to accomplish that. Whatever it was, that price needed paying. Sometimes profit didn't count for everything.

The Vengeance might have been more or less invisible to radar, but before long it showed up visually in the Harold Meeker 's forward screen. It looked even bigger alone in space than attached to a planet… and no wonder. It wasn't the size of a spacecraft. It was the size of a baby asteroid?maybe even a toddler asteroid. It also bristled with weapons emplacements that hadn't been visible while it slept away the centuries on Gilver.

What worried Jennifer most was that the Vengeance was an artifact from the side that had lost the Suicide Wars. What sort of craft had the winners used? Whatever the answer, those ships were gone now, either destroyed in the war or turned on one another afterward. The Vengeance remained, huge and deadly and all alone, as if a last Tyrannosaurus rex had somehow been raised from the grave and turned loose in the jungle parks of modern Earth.

The abrupt voice came out of the speaker again. "Berth your vessel at the lock with the flashing amber light, non-Foitani."

Jennifer looked in the screen. The flashing amber light seemed bright enough to be visible down on Gilver, let alone from just a couple of kilometers away. She said, "They aren't crediting us with a whole lot of brains."

"We aren't Foitani. How could we have brains?" Greenberg answered. "They're giving us more credit than they think we deserve just by talking with us. For that matter, how smart are we? Here we are, going to dicker for specimens from our own race and for a way to keep the Suicide Wars from starting over, and what can we offer? What do we have that the Great Ones might want?"

It was a good question. As with a good many others lately, Jennifer would have admired it more had she had a good answer for it. She rocked back and forth in her seat, not so much concentrating as trying to relax and let her subconscious come up with one. In SF novels, inspiration was usually enough to let the hero make the story come out right.

Inspiration did not come. In any case, inspiration looked puny when set in the balance against the kilometers of deadliness of the Vengeance. A mammal in the jungle park might be more inspired than any Tyrannosaurus rex ever hatched, but that wouldn't keep it from getting eaten if the dinosaur decided to open his mouth and gulp.