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  “They thought they were being invaded!” Zhaki objected.

  “Yessss.” Brookida nodded. “But Earth’s colony hadn’t heard about contact, and they lacked equipment to hear Galactic inquiries. When hoonish officials came to give a ritual last warning, they met something not in their manuals … armed trespassersss. Barbarians with no Galactic language. Mistakes followed. Military units swarmed in from Joph—”

  “This has nothing to do with our present problem.” Kaa interrupted Brookida’s history lecture. “Zhaki, you must stop cutting the local hoons’ fishing netsss! It draws attention to us.”

  “Angry attention,” Brookida added. “They grow wary against your dep-p-predations, Zhaki. Last time, they cast many spears.”

  The young dolphin snorted.

  Let the whalers throw!

  As in autumn storms of old—

  Waves come, two-legs drown!

  Kaa flinched. Moments ago, Zhaki was eager to avenge humans who had died on a lost colony, back when dolphins could barely speak. Now the irate youth lumped all bipeds together, dredging up a grudge from days before men and women became caretakers of Earth. There was no arguing with a mind that worked that way.

  Still, it was Kaa’s job to enforce discipline.

  If you repeat this act,

  No harpoon will sting your

  backside

  Like my snapping teeth!

  It wasn’t great haiku — not poetical Trinary like Captain Creideiki used to dazzle his crew with, crafting devoted loyalty from waves of gorgeous sound. But the warning rocked Zhaki. Kaa followed up, projecting a beam of intense sonar from his brow, piercing Zhaki’s body, betraying fear churnings within.

  When in doubt, he thought, fall back on the ancestors’ ways.

  “You are dismisssssed,” he finished. “Go rest. Tomorrow’s another long day.”

  Zhaki swerved obediently, retreating to the curtained alcove he shared with Mopol.

  Alas, despite this brief success, Kaa also knew it would not last.

  Tsh’t told us this was an important mission. But I bet she assigned us all here because we’re the ones Streaker could most easily do without.

  That night he dreamed of piloting.

  Neodolphins had a flair for it — a precocious talent for the newest sapient species in all Five Galaxies. Just three hundred years after human geneticists began modifying natural bottlenose dolphins, starship Streaker was dispatched in a noble experiment to prove the skill of dolphin crews. The Terragens Council thought it might help solidify Earth’s shaky position to become known as a source of crackerjack pilots.

  “Lucky” Kaa had naturally been pleased to be chosen for the mission, though it brought home one glaring fact.

  I was good … but not the best.

  In half slumber, Kaa relived the terrifying ambush at Morgran, a narrow escape that still rocked him, even after all this time.

  Socketed in his station on the bridge, helpless to do anything but go along for the ride, as Chief Pilot Keepiru sent the old Snark-class survey ship through maneuvers a Tandu fighter ship would envy, neatly evading lurk mines and snare fields, then diving back into the Morgran maelstrom, without benefit of guidance computation.

  The memory lost no vividness after two long years.

  Transit threads swarmed around them, a dizzying blur of dimensional singularities. By a whim of cerebral evolution, trained dolphin pilots excelled at picturing the shimmering space-time clefts with sonar imagery. But Kaa had never rushed through such a tangle! A tornado of knotted strands. Any shining cord, caught at the wrong angle, might hurl the ship back into normal space with the consistency of quark stew …

  … Yet somehow, the ship sped nimbly from one thread to the next, Keepiru escaped the pursuers, dodged past the normal trade routes, and finally brought Streaker to a refuge Captain Creideiki chose.

  Kithrup, where resources for repairs could be found as pure isotopic metal, growing like coral in a poison sea …

  … Kithrup, homeworld of two unknown races, one sinking in an ancient wallow of despair, and the other hopeful, new …

  … Kithrup, where no one should have been able to follow …

  … But they did. Galactics, feuding and battling insanely overhead …

  … And soon Keepiru was gone, along with Toshio, Hikahi, and Mr. Orley …

  … and Kaa learned that some wishes were better not coming true.

  He learned that he did not really want to be chief pilot, after all.

  In the years since, he has gained experience. The escapes he piloted — from Oakka and the Fractal System — were performed well, if not as brilliantly.

  Not quite good enough to preserve Kaa’s nickname.

  I never heard anyone else say they could do better.

  All in all, it was not a restful sleep.

  • • •

  Zhaki and Mopol were at it again, before dawn, rubbing and squealing beyond a slim curtain they nearly shredded with their slashing tails. They should have gone outside to frolic, but Kaa dared not order it.

  “It is typical postadolescent behavior,” Brookida told him, by the food dispenser. “Young males grow agitated. Among natural dolphins, unisex play ceases to be sufficient as youths turn their thoughts to winning the companionship of females. Young allies often test their status by jointly challenging older males.”

  Of course Kaa knew all that. But he could not agree with the “typical” part. I never acted that way. Oh sure, I was an obnoxious, arrogant young fin. But I never acted intentionally gross, or like some reverted animal.

  “Maybe Tsh’t should have assigned females to our team.” He pondered aloud.

  “Wouldn’t help,” answered the elderly metallurgist. “If those two schtorks weren’t getting any aboard ship, they wouldn’t do any better here. Our fern-fins have high standards.”

  Kaa sputtered out a lump of half-chewed mullet as he laughed, grateful for Brookida’s lapse into coarse humor — though it grazed by a touchy subject among Streaker’s crew, the petition to breed that some had been circulating and signing.

  Kaa changed the subject. “How goes your analysis of the matter the hoons dumped overboard?”

  Brookida nodded toward his workbench, where several ribboned casks lay cracked open. Bits of bone and crystal glittered amid piles of ashen dust.

  “So far, the contents confirm what the hoonish boy wrote in his journal.”

  “Amazing. I was sure it must be a fake, planted by our enemies.” Transcripts of the handwritten diary, passed on by Streaker’s command, seemed too incredible to believe.

  “Apparently the story is true. Six races do live together on this world. As part of ecology-oriented rituals, they send their unrecyclable wastes — called dross—to sea for burial in special disposal zones. This includes parts of their processed bodies.”

  “And you found—”

  “Human remainsss.” Brookida nodded. “As well as chimps, hoons, urs … the whole crowd this young ‘Alvin’ wrote about.”

  Kaa was still dazed by it all.

  “And there are … J-Jophur.” He could hardly speak the word aloud.

  Brookida frowned. “A matter of definition, it seems. I’ve exchanged message queries with Gillian and the Niss Machine. They suggest these so-called traeki might have the other races fooled as part of an elaborate, long-range plot.”

  “How could that be?”

  “I am not sure. It would not require that every traeki be in on the scheme. Just a few, with secret master rings, and the hidden equipment to dominate their fellow beings. I cannot quite fathom it. But Gillian has questioned the captured Library unit. And that seems a possssible scenario.”

  Kaa had no answer for that. Such matters seemed so complex, so far beyond his grasp, his only response was to shiver from the tip of his rostrum all the way down to his trembling tail.

  They spent another day spying on the local sooners. The hoonish seaport, Wuphon, seemed to match the descriptions in Alv
in’s journal … though more crude and shabby in the eyes of beings who had seen the sky towers of Tanith and bright cities on Earth’s moon. The hoons appeared to pour more lavish attention on their boats than their homes. The graceful sailing ships bore delicate carving work, down to proud figureheads shaped like garish deities.

  When a vessel swept past Kaa, he overheard the deep, rumbling sounds of singing, as the sailors boomed evident joy across the whitecaps.

  It’s hard to believe these are the same folk Brookida described as passionless prigs. Maybe there are two races that look alike, and have similar-sounding names. Kaa made a mental note to send an inquiry in tonight’s report.

  Hoons weren’t alone on deck. He peered at smaller creatures, scrambling nimbly over the rigging, but when he tried using a portable camera, the image swept by too fast to catch much more than a blur.

  Streaker also wanted better images of the volcano, which apparently was a center of industrial activity among the sooner races. Gillian and Tsh’t were considering sending another independent robot ashore, though earlier drones had been lost. Kaa got spectral readings of the mountain’s steaming emissions, and discovered the trace of a slender tramway, camouflaged against the rocky slopes.

  He checked frequently on Zhaki and Mopol, who seemed to be behaving for a change, sticking close to their assigned task of eavesdropping on the red qheuen colony.

  But later, when all three of them were on their way back to base, Mopol lagged sluggishly behind.

  “It must-t have been something I ate,” the blue dolphin murmured, as unpleasant gurglings erupted within his abdomen.

  Oh great, Kaa thought. I warned him a hundred times not to sample local critters before Brookida had a chance to test them!

  Mopol swore it was nothing. But as the water surrounding their shelter dimmed with the setting sun, he started moaning again. Brookida used their tiny med scanner, but was at a loss to tell what had gone wrong.

  Tsh’t

  NOMINALLY, SHE COMMANDED EARTH’S MOST FAMOUS spaceship — a beauty almost new by Galactic standards, just nine hundred years old when the Terragens Council purchased it from a Puntictin used-vessel dealer, then altered and renamed it Streaker to show off the skills of neodolphin voyagers.

  Alas, the bedraggled craft seemed unlikely ever again to cruise the great spiral ways. Burdened by a thick coat of refractory Stardust — and now trapped deep underwater while pursuers probed the abyss with sonic bombs — to all outward appearances, it seemed doomed to join the surrounding great pile of ghost ships, sinking in the slowly devouring mud of an oceanic ravine.

  Gone was the excitement that first led Tsh’t into the service. The thrill of flight. The exhilaration. Nor was there much relish in “authority,” since she did not make policies or crucial decisions. Gillian Baskin had that role.

  What remained was handling ten thousand details … like when a disgruntled cook accosted her in a water-filled hallway, wheedling for permission to go up to the realm of light.

  “It’ssss too dark and c-cold to go fishing down here!” complained Bulla-jo, whose job it was to help provide meals for a hundred finicky dolphins. “My harvesst team can hardly move, wearing all that pressure armor. And have you seen the so-called fish we catch in our nets? Weird things, all sspiky and glowing!”

  Tsh’t replied, “Dr. Makanee has passed at least forty common varieties of local sea life as both tasty and nutritious, so long as we sssupplement with the right additives.”

  Still, Bulla-jo groused.

  “Everyone favors the samples we got earlier, from the upper world of waves and open air. There are great schools of lovely things swimming around up-p there.”

  Then Bulla-jo lapsed into Trinary.

  Where perfect sunshine

  Makes lively prey fish glitter

  As they flee from us!

  He concluded, “If you want fresh f-food, let us go to the surface, like you p-promised!”

  Tsh’t quashed an exasperated sigh over Bulla-jo’s forget-fulness. In this early stage of their Uplift, neodolphins often perceived whatever they chose, ignoring contradictions.

  I do it myself now and then.

  She tried cultivating patience, as Creideiki used to teach.

  “Dr. Baskin canceled plans to send more parties to the sunlit surface,” she told Bulla-jo, whose speckled flanks and short beak revealed ancestry from the stenos dolphin line. “Did it escape your notice that gravitic emissions have been detected, cruising above this deep fissure? Or that someone has been dropping sonic charges, seeking to find usss?”

  Bulla-jo lowered his rostrum in an attitude of obstinate insolence. “We can g-go naked … carry no tools the eatees could detect-ct.”

  Tsh’t marveled at such single-minded thinking.

  “That might work if the gravitics were far away, say in orbit, or passing by at high altitude. But once they know our rough location they can cruise low and slow, ssseeking the radiochemical spoor of molecules in our very blood. Surface-swimming fins would give us away.”

  Irony was a bittersweet taste to Tsh’t, for she knew something she had no intention of sharing with Bulla-jo. They are going to detect us, no matter how many precautions Gillian orders.

  To the frustrated crew member, she had only soothing words.

  “Just float loose for a while longer, will you, Bulla-jo? I, too, would love to chase silvery fish through warm waters. All may be resolved sh-shortly.”

  Grumpy, but mollified, the messmate saluted by clapping his pectoral fins and swimming back to duty … though Tsh’t knew the crisis would recur. Dolphins disliked being so far from sunlight, or from the tide’s cycloid rub against shore. Tursiops weren’t meant to dwell so deep, where pressurized sound waves carried in odd, disturbing ways.

  It is the realm of Physeter, sperm whale, great-browed messenger of the ancient dream gods, who dives to wrestle great-armed demons.

  The abyss was where hopes and nightmares from past, present, and future drifted to form dark sediments — a place best left to sleeping things.

  We neo-fins are superstitious at heart. But what can you expect, having humans as our beloved patrons? Humans, who are themselves wolflings, primitive by the standards of a billion-year-old culture.

  This she pondered while inhaling deeply, filling her gill lungs with the air-charged fluid, oxy-water, that filled most of Streaker’s residential passages — a genetically improvised manner of breathing that nourished, but never comfortably. One more reason many of the crew yearned for the clean, bright world above.

  Turning toward the Streaker’s bridge, she thrust powerfully through the fizzing liquid, leaving clouds of effervescence behind her driving flukes. Each bubble gave off a faint pop! as it hiccuped into existence, or merged back into supercharged solution. Sometimes the combined susurration sounded like elfin applause — or derisive laughter — following her all over the ship.

  At least I don’t fool myself she thought. I do all right. Gillian says so, and puts her trust in me. But I know I’m not meant for command.

  Tsh’t had never expected such duty when Streaker blasted out of Earth orbit, refurbished for use by a neodolphin crew. Back then — over two years ago, by ship-clock time — Tsh’t had been only a junior lieutenant, a distant fifth in line from Captain Creideiki. And it was common knowledge that Tom Orley and Gillian Baskin could step in if the need seemed urgent … as Gillian eventually did, during the crisis on Kithrup.

  Tsh’t didn’t resent that human intervention. In arranging an escape from the Kithrup trap, Tom and Gillian pulled off a miracle, even if it led to the lovers’ separation.

  Wasn’t that the job of human leaders and heroes? To intercede when a crisis might overwhelm their clients?

  But where do we turn when matters get too awful even for humans to handle?

  Galactic tradition adhered to a firm — some said oppressive — hierarchy of debts and obligations. A client race to its patron. That patron to its sapience benefactor … and
so on, tracing the great chain of uplift all the way back to the legendary Progenitors. The same chain of duty underlay the reaction of some fanatical clans on hearing news of Streaker’s discovery — a fleet of derelict ships with ancient, venerated markings.

  But the pyramid of devotion had positive aspects. The uplift cascade meant each new species got help crossing the dire gap dividing mere animals from starfaring citizens. And if your sponsors lacked answers, they might ask their patrons. And so on.

  Gillian had tried appealing to this system, taking Streaker from Kithrup to Oakka, the green world, seeking counsel from impartial savants of the Navigation Institute. Failing there, she next sought help in the Fractal Orb — that huge icy place, a giant snowflake that spanned a solar system’s width — hoping the venerable beings who dwelled there might offer wise detachment, or at least refuge.

  It wasn’t Dr. Baskin’s fault that neither gamble paid off very well. She had the right general idea, Tsh’t mused. But Gillian remains blind to the obvious.

  Who is most likely to help, when you’re in trouble and a lynch mob is baying at your tail?

  The courts?

  Scholars at some university?

  Or your own family?

  Tsh’t never dared suggest her idea aloud. Like Tom Orley, Gillian took pride in the romantic image of upstart Earthclan, alone against the universe. Tsh’t knew the answer would be no.

  So, rather than flout a direct order, Tsh’t had quietly put her own plan into effect, just before Streaker made her getaway from the Fractal System.

  What else could I do, with Streaker pursued by horrid fleets, our best crew members gone, and Earth under siege? Our Tymbrimi friends can barely help even themselves. Meanwhile, the Galactic Institutes have been corrupted and the Old Ones lied to us.

  We had no choice.

  … I had no choice …

  It was hard concealing things, especially from someone who knew dolphins as well as Gillian. For weeks since Streaker arrived here, Tsh’t half hoped her disobedience would come to nought.

  Then the detection officer reported gravitic traces. Starcraft engines, entering Jijo space.