Nimisha's Ship Read online

  “I beg your pardon, Syrona,” Jon said, executing an apologetic bow. “An excellent proposal, since priorities are pulling us in two directions. Two birds with one stone . . .”

  “Where’s a stone here big enough to get one of those murderous avians, much less two?” Syrona asked, giving a nervous little laugh, but she was clearly relieved by the reception of her suggestion.

  “We’ll stock the gig from Cater’s supplies so Tim won’t go without burgers,” Nimisha said, chuckling.

  “I think he’s taking to what the Sh’im eat all the time,” Syrona said with another laugh, not quite as nervous. “Those nutty morsels, not the hot stuff.”

  “So let’s take a group of Sh’im in the Fiver to the freighter wreck, shall we?” Jon proposed. “See what they can use from the pods. The Fiver can bring back quite a bit. When there’s enough here, we can go exploring.”

  He glanced at Nimisha with a look of approval for the versatility of the ship. She waved a hand, accepting the idea. An exploratory voyage with him would certainly allow her to get to know him better. She liked him, but with Syrona and Casper so intent on their making a partnership, she felt herself resisting. She had the notion that he was resisting the pairing as well, which both put her in charity with him and made her wonder why he didn’t attempt to forward an interest. Maybe he resented being catapulted into an intimacy even though she knew she was feeling the strains of celibacy, possibly more than he was. Perverse of her, she knew.

  Then more immediate concerns diverted her from such rumination.

  Ool and Ook were surprised to see Helm’s tape of the freighter and the pods. And delighted when they understood that these supplies would be available to them. Even their most adventurous scout parties had been unable to traverse the mountain range that lay between the two wrecks. Nimisha had had Helm make maps of Erehwon from space, a Mercator projection, a Goode’s Homolosine, and a Lambert Azimuthal equal area for detailed views of smaller areas, plus modified cylindrical and conic projections for the hemispheres. Helm could also, on request, put up on any screen the 3-D spherical globe. She had him print up an Azimuthal for the area in which the freighter had come down, complete with topography.

  The freighter had come down on the eastern edge of this continent, and to the south of the Sh’im, the formidable mountain range separating the two portions. Three very dark-furred Sh’im were fascinated by the maps, poring over them. They hooted loudly and with great appreciation when Helm screened the 3-D of Erehwon and they could watch it turning. Nimisha had him do the same for Vega III and old Earth. In their turn, they responded by unrolling carefully preserved star charts, printed on a flimsy material that Casper suggested was the Sh’im plastic analog. The colors were as bright as when they had first been printed; the designations of the various stars provided no clue to any of the humans or Helm as to their current galactic position. The Sh’im had colonized three different star systems, one quite far from the home world, which proved they had been space-faring for a significant period of time. None were apparently near Erehwon, so the Sh’im were probably just as lost and distant from their original star system as the humans were. Neither species took encouragement from that fact.

  Ool and Ook quickly picked a group to go with the humans. Syrona chose to stay behind, as she was feeling oddly queasy. Doc ran a check on the fetus and found nothing untoward. For good measure, he administered a spray of broad multivitamin and trace minerals. He recommended some peace and quiet, with her feet up, and she was as glad to have the gig to herself while the others went on the Fiver. Tim was essential in any team working with the Sh’im.

  “Good thing they’re on the small side,” Casper remarked as the furry bodies of the Sh’im took up most of the floor space in the main cabin of the spaceship.

  “Warn them we’re taking off,” Jon told Tim, who was sitting with their guests.

  “He hoots as to the manner born,” Casper said with due pride as Tim relayed the message.

  “Not that they’ll feel much movement,” Nimisha said at the controls. She and Jon had arrived at a tacit arrangement: They took turns piloting the Fiver. She felt that was only fair. Jon was not only acting captain of his own group, but also a very deft pilot. She could not object to his taking turns and it allowed her to watch someone else obviously enjoying the command of the Fiver. “Take her up in a vertical lift, Helm.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Any reason you didn’t use Fleet usage?” Jon asked idly.

  “This Fiver is a civilian ship,” she said with a grin. “The Fleet will program its own Helms, if they decide to use AI’s.”

  “The Fiver survived the wormhole a lot better than the Poolbeg or the others,” he commented, jerking a thumb at the broken bird-ship in the rear screen. “If that’s what an AI can do, I’m for it.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” Helm said.

  “You’re welcome, Helm. That was one superior job of piloting to come through that wormhole with only a few scrapes.” He shook his head, apparently recalling the battering the Poolbeg had taken.

  “Can we please see where we’re going, Nimisha?” Tim asked, leaning into the bridge area.

  “Helm, if you would be so good,” Nimisha said.

  “Of course, Lady Nimisha.” In the next instant there were startled hoots of the Sh’im and a rustling and moving about that made Jon look around the partition.

  He was grinning broadly, but signaled a thumbs-up to reassure her about their passengers.

  Later on, Tim had them line up at Cater’s dispenser worktop and gave orders for food and drink. Cater had accepted samples of the Sh’im edibles and was able to re-create them. Tim had a burger and served Jon and Casper. Nimisha had a cheese pasta dish and a salad, since they now had access to the fresh produce from the Sh’im gardens. The broad green leaf was neither spinach nor lettuce but had a definite and pleasant taste, more like fennel.

  Even at cruising speed, it took several hours to make the trip. However, as it was the vernal season, they would have six hours of daylight in which to conduct their work.

  The humans had arbitrarily decided which pods they’d open first: tools, blankets, some of the prefab building, the disassembled vehicles, and the repeller shields. If, for instance, the older Sh’im allowed those to be mounted on the cliff, the danger of stone-dropping avians would no longer terrorize them and the town could expand out of the crowded caves. The gardens could be extended and more edible leaves and roots provided, especially as they could put the repellers to work underground as well as over it. Further afield, the Sh’im gathered wild grains in season where it grew naturally. Although the harvesting was fraught with the peril of avian attacks, the Sh’im managed to keep casualties low. To protect their towns, they had devised a powerful catapult—similar in structure to the ancient crossbows. They were evidently good marksmen. While the humans had not seen the device in action, both Jon and Casper allowed that it would be as effective as the gig’s missiles. They were of two minds about installing a missile system on the cliffs. Nimisha had suggested that as long as the Sh’im had an effective defense, they should reserve their more advanced technology for the time being.

  Then they were fast approaching the wrecked freighter, and Timmy was excitedly telling the passengers—in broken Sh’im—about the marvelous things they would soon see.

  “Where shall I land, Lady Nimisha?” Helm asked.

  Nimisha looked at Jon and Casper. “Near the biggest clump of pods. I think that constitutes a fair selection of what’s available.”

  “Won’t they want to see the freighter?” Casper asked.

  “They’d find it awkward climbing into it, I think,” Nimisha said. “Unless you have ladders available.”

  “Point,” Jon said, “but I think we should take a couple of dark-furs on a tour to show good faith.”

  “It’s not as if they could fly it away, is it?” Casper added.

  “All too true,” Nimisha remarked wryly.

>   “I can’t remember if we closed the hatches on those skeletons,” Jon said, frowning. “We should have.”

  “If there’s time, I’ll grab body bags and cover them up,” Casper said. “Leave it to me. We can hold a proper burial ceremony next time we’re back. I suspect we’ll be making additional trips. I know we’d have the gig while you’re gone, but Syrona wants a house, a proper house,” he said with a long-suffering sigh for the vagaries of his pregnant partner. “I think I do, too, complete with a fireplace for the cold winter nights Ay was talking about. Have you ever felt how thick the fur on him is?”

  Nimisha nodded, for she’d had occasion to touch some of the weavers when they showed her their looms and what they were currently working on. It was a craft that had always fascinated her. She might try her hand at it when they got back from their exploration of the other two M-type planets.

  Though none of them discussed the subject, once Helm had regretfully admitted that none of the primaries listed on the Sh’im star charts matched anything in his data files, they were individually coming to terms with the fact that, quite possibly, they might spend their lifetimes on Erehwon. That is, if one of the other planets was not gentler in its climate and indigenous species. Not that she was eager to leave the Sh’im and Erehwon. There were only four of them and not a sufficient gene pool. She’d have to have children by Casper, as Syrona had had one by Jon. Or more.

  “They exude a sort of lemony smell, don’t they?” she observed, bringing herself ruthlessly back to the moment.

  Helm set the Fiver down so gently there wasn’t so much as a bump.

  “Well done, Helm,” she said and touched the control to open the two hatches.

  The exodus was remarkably like a stampede as the Sh’im leaped daringly from the open hatch down the human-adult-sized steps to the ground. Jon, Casper, and Nimisha followed as Sh’im swarmed about the pods, hooting and ooing and dancing with excitement.

  “Tools, I think,” Casper said, consulting the printout in his hand and going to the nearest pod on his list. “Jon, the next one has tools, too. Nimisha, you open the third one. Jon, go to the fourth on the left. It’s listed as prefab units. I’ll join you as soon as I open up.”

  Though the Sh’im were small, they had unusual strength for their body size. They were also good observers and they needed only to be shown what to touch on the digital locks—each commodity had its own series of four numbers—and managed to undo the tight clasp.

  “One way to teach them our numbers,” Jon said, pleased with their quickness.

  Rather than requiring the Sh’im to scramble up and into high pods, Jon and Casper tipped those containers still upright to their sides for easier access. Soon enough, all the pods in that first strewing were open and the contents examined—even the farm tools that had been designed to be drawn by some four-legged draft animal. Neither Jon nor Casper—and certainly not Nimisha, who’d been city bred—could explain exactly what the more complicated equipment was used for, though they did recognize a plow.

  “I can see juvenile shaggies from those grazers on the other continent being taught to pull one of these,” Nimisha said, laughing at such a whimsy.

  “They have tried to domesticate them,” Casper surprised them by saying. “But so far they’ve only found the ones the herd rejects, the weak or lame. So long as you feed them, they’re amenable to being kept enclosed. The trouble is they grow up and break out of any enclosure the Sh’im have been able to construct.”

  “There are other, smaller grazers,” Nimisha said. She remembered seeing them eating apart from the bigger creatures.

  Casper grinned. “They’ve tried. Fast as the Sh’im are, those deer types are faster. We weren’t able to hunt them, much less catch any. First hint of danger and they’re off . . . at incredible speeds. Like the springbok types from old Earth.”

  “Didn’t the Altair III colony domesticate their deer types?”

  “Finally,” Jon said with a grin.

  The Sh’im also spent a great deal of time trying to figure out the use of some of the tools, talking among themselves and turning the equipment this way and that. Then Jon found a pod full of disassembled wagon elements. He showed the Sh’im the instruction booklet with its illustration of the finished product and they went into a frenzy of excitement. One group was trying to push and shove the pod toward the Fiver in their eagerness to take possession of its contents. Others were wildly running up and down the line of pods trying to find a similarly marked one. Jon and Casper managed to convey, with Tim acting as pantomimist, that as many as the Sh’im wanted would be transported. In this first trip, they should take back samples of everything that looked to be useful.

  “I had an easier time of it with my girls,” Nimisha said. She and her group happened to find blankets, clothing, pots, pans, and domestic items. They had run back to see what was causing so much hooting and ululation. “The wooden wheels with the metal rims they’re using now are pretty good, considering the materials to hand, but these low-pressure balloon tires will revolutionize travel. Good thing they were reinforced with that plastic fiber.”

  Jon grinned. “Whoever stocked this vessel thought ahead to cope with unknown and undoubtedly rough terrain.”

  What the Sh’im considered essential to take back with them was more than could be accommodated in the Fiver. There were plaintive ululations from the Sh’im as they pared down the stack of treasures to fit the available space. That was when one of the dark-coats was pinned down under one of the crates, ooooling piteously. Instantly, Sh’im and humans went to its aid, but it was obvious from the way its foot hung, it had been hurt.

  “I can’t do anything with it there, you know,” Doc said tersely.

  Ay and Bee came forward and purposefully led the way for the dark-coat to Doc’s facility, patting the injured Sh’im and volubly reassuring the others who crowded about anxiously.

  They got Illi, for that was what Tim understood its name to be, safely on the couch. Though it was wide-eyed with apprehension, a whiff of some gas near its face had it reposing in happy comfort while Doc made his examination.

  “More of a bad bruise, with some ligaments torn,” Doc said. Tim did one of his mimed explanations, which was passed back through the ship to those waiting for a response. “Its joints are bulging with mineral deposits, and it’s got the worst case of accretions I’ve seen so far. But then it’s older. I’ll just remove them while I regen and nu-skin the graze. He’ll return in far better shape than he came.”

  That was when Tim suggested they accommodate the passengers in the sleeping cabins, a move that opened up more space in the main room. They also used the gymnasium space on the lower deck.

  “Helm, are we overloading?” Jon asked as he settled in the pilot’s seat for the return voyage.

  “No, Commander. The Fiver is capable of lifting considerable tonnage without stressing the engines,” Helm said.

  Jon, his eyes sparkling with suppressed laughter, grinned at Nimisha, seated in the next chair over. She grinned back rather smugly.

  “I’m really looking forward to seeing how she flies on IS drive,” he said.

  His words were delivered in a level, thoughtful tone, but she got a hint of his eagerness to put the Fiver to that test.

  “How many trips will we have to make, Captain, to provide the Sh’im with enough to keep them happy before we go?” she asked.

  “Not how many trips, Lady Nimisha, but how few we can get away with,” he replied, some impatience coloring his voice.

  They made six trips, to equip all four towns with repeller screens, enough wagons and the fuel to run them, and farming and domestic equipment. Only one pod of blankets and fabric was brought, since not much was needed with spring in the air. With many willing hands, Casper and Syrona had a fine two-bedroom prefab house in four days, with running water from their own well and a septic tank for waste products. They had a shower and a bath in a small but adequate bathroom. The Sh’im produced bas
ic furniture items, like beds, chairs, chests, and tables that craftsfolk had made, working late into the night, in gratitude for the help the communities had received from the humans.

  At Doc’s suggestion, another, longer trip was undertaken, to bring the Poolbeg’s diagnostic unit to the main Sh’im town.

  “As I mentioned in my analysis of Ay and Bee, they had residual accretions of minerals in their systems. These are present in varying quantities in all those Sh’im I have treated for broken bones and cuts. I have automatically removed the accretions as a preventative treatment. We do not wish to upset our little allies, but I would like to use every opportunity possible to remove those accretions from all the Sh’im, especially the dark-coats, like Illi, who was all but crippled by the deposits. Those are not at all beneficial.”

  “D’you know how many thousands there are of them?” Nimisha asked.

  “Perhaps when they are completely confident of our goodwill toward them, a proper program can be initiated. In the meantime, I will remove the material whenever I can. I will program the Poolbeg unit to that effect.”

  “You’re the doc,” Jon said.

  “It’s a very good idea,” Syrona said, Casper nodding agreement.

  While the Poolbeg’s diagnostic was not an AI unit, Doc updated its memory with information on the Sh’im anatomy and biology, as well as the physical profiles of the humans, especially Syrona. He programmed in automatic checkups for Tim, who was showing substantial physical improvement from the nutritional program Doc had initiated. Additional supplies and a maintenance check had the unit in perfect working condition. Syrona was reassured by its availability, more for Tim’s sake than her own.

  Then Syrona came up with an excellent notion. She was, after all, a communications expert. So a satellite pulse beam was constructed, to be put into position by the Fiver when it reached the proper orbit for the satellite, on its exploratory trip to the other M-planets. That way, the Fiver could keep in contact with Erehwon. They found sufficient units to make a powerful enough comsat, with solar panel wings to keep it operating for several generations, if necessary. Nimisha was impressed with Syrona’s professional abilities, seeing her in a new light. Syrona was also improving in health and vitality from the better nutrition she was receiving.