Journey Beyond the Sea - 12. Chapter 12

The rest of the evening was a whirlwind of discovery. Bzup wanted to see all the things they had previously held up to him from the large crate in the catch room, and which he had previously only scanned by sound or touch. The excited buzzes of wonder the little alien made at each new thing was catching, and others of the crew had joined them there to watch Bzup react. It took over an hour to display the objects they had accrued in the crate, and after that, Bzup made a slow circuit of the catch room, and examined his surroundings.

Nita then commenced to showing Bzup images on the big curved display screen that hung above Deera's desk, to which the little alien reacted with even more buzzes of interest. There were outdoor scenes taken in the mountains near Nocksic Bay, and scenes of the harbor there, and town life. She then showed Bzup images of Vespris at sea, and then areas within the ship, to which the alien reacted with some recognition when it came to places he had been before. That Bzup recognized a cabin like the one Jem and Nico shared, the ship's mess, and the dispensary, made Jem certain that Bzup understood that he was aboard the very vessel he was looking at. The contented buzz that was the response to that seemed to confirm the notion that Bzup was happy right where he was.

Nita continued to show Bzup images of life on the ship, and so when they came to an image of an orx, it was startling. Bzup suddenly buzzed harshly, and when Nita then showed him an image of a rider, Bzup even seemed upset.

"Rider," Jem explained, pointing at the display. "Bzup?"

"Rider," Bzup repeated carefully. He looked up at Jem, and Jem was surprised at the intensity within the lone eye. "Rider no Bzup. No Bzup kind."

"He seems to know what it is, and what it was used for," Mister Sharples suggested quietly. "But I don't know if he's saying that he should not be compared to a rider, or that the uses of the rider were not of his doing."

"I would say he doesn't care for it, either way," Nico put in.

"No Bzup-kind," the little alien repeated then. "No Bzup-think."

"Now...that sounds like he means he had no part of that affair," the chief engineer decided. "That he does not agree with the way the riders have been used. So, perhaps we're correct in thinking that Bzup's people are not unified in their methods of dealing with being stranded on Benteen."

"I want to try something else," Nita said then, looking thoughtful.

"What do you have in mind?" Jem asked, by then feeling his tiredness. "We've showed him just about everything."

Nita smiled, and brought up one of the internal scans she had taken of the alien earlier. She pointed at the screen then, watching for Bzup's reaction. "Bzup? What?"

The large eye focused on the screen, and was almost immediately followed by another buzz of interest. "Bzup!"

Nita's breath sighed out, as if she had been holding it. "He recognizes his own internal anatomy. If that isn't the final stamp of intelligence, I don't know what is."

Bzup turned to Jem, and waved a small hand at the screen, as if amazed. "Bzup!"

Jem and Nico laughed. "Yes, it's you," Jem confirmed. He patted his own chest, and then waved his hand around at the others. "Jem, Nico, Nita, Deera, Kel, Mister Sharples...all learn about Bzup."

"Learn," the alien repeated. "What?"

"Now you've done it," Nita said, laughing. "Try explaining that one!"

Jem frowned. "Um...Bzup come, Jem not know Bzup. Bzup stay, Jem learn about Bzup. Jem learn, now know Bzup."

Bzzzz. The alien placed a small hand against his hide. "Bzup. Jem know Bzup."

"Yes, that's right."

The alien stretched his hand out, and touched Jem's sleeve. "Jem. Bzup know Jem."

Nico sighed. "That sounds like we're making headway!"

Bzup immediately turned to the boy, and placed a hand on Nico's sleeve. "Nico. Bzup know Nico."

Jem's boyfriend looked delighted. "That's right."

"Learn more," Jem explained. "Learn more, know more."

"Learn more," Bzup agreed. Zzzz!

The scan of Bzup on the display vanished then, to be replaced with the image of Til Majors, who stared down at them with interest. "Well! I heard something new had happened."

Bzup turned at the sound of the man's voice, and spied him on the display. "Til! Bzup know Til!"

Til's eyes widened. "What did he say?"

"That he knows you," Jem said, unable to keep a straight face. "As you can see, Bzup has an eye now."

"And a very nice one it is, too," Til agreed. "Hello, Bzup."

"HelloTil."

The man in the display shook his head in wonder. "He's making terrific progress."

Nita nodded. "We already knew long ago, in our own culture, that sight was an important part of cognitive development. Before ocular implants, those born without sight were much more limited in learning by having to rely solely on sound and touch."

"But Bzup's sound awareness is infinitely greater than ours," Til reminded. "His use of sound is more on the order of sonography than the simple uses we put it to."

"Agreed. Not only can Bzup use sound as a form of echolocation, but he can actually paint pictures of his surroundings with it." Nita shrugged. "But even then, it's not as good as sight. I frankly don't know why his kind don't have an eye all the time, if they are able to."

Jem scratched his jaw. "Maybe...eyes are of less use in the water. Especially as dark as Benteen's northern ocean is. Sound would be more effective there."

"Point." The biologist smiled. "But as far as we know, Bzup's people are air-breathers like us, who can readily adapt to living in the water. They aren't natural amphibians, but have to adjust themselves to operate in either environment."

"And the eye seems a new addition for Bzup," Mister Sharples pointed out. "At least, he acts like he hadn't had one in the immediate past. So, it's not like he just recently dispensed with it to travel underwater." The man rubbed his chin, thinking. "Whatever he was doing before he decided to come visit us, sight wasn't a requirement."

"He can't just be constantly switching back and forth between a dry environment and a wet one," Deera said. "One must be the natural state, and the other adaptive."

"A mastery of electricity and electronics is a requirement for star travel," Nico pointed out. "Would their ships be full of water?"

"It could be done," Mister Sharples said. "But the development of electricity and electrical components in their early stages is where water would be most problematic. Even if they originally bioengineered electrical components, water in the environment would be a hindrance to advancement. I would think that would require a dry environment to get started."

Jem smiled, and turned to the alien, who had been listening with interest, his eye moving back and forth among the humans as each person spoke. "Bzup?"

"Jem?"

"Bzup-kind home in air?" Jem made a show of inhaling deeply, and then pointing to his nose as he exhaled. "Air." He turned then and walked over to the tank Bzup had been living in, and leaned down and indicated the seawater in the bottom. "Water.

Bzup followed him to the tank, and looked in at the liquid. "Water. Like drink?"

"Yes." Jem inhaled deeply again, and then exhaled, and once more pointed to his nose. "Air. Breathe air."

"Air."

Jem nodded. "Bzup-kind home in air, or water?" As a last thought, he reached out and gently laid a fingertip on the little horn end of the snorkel atop Bzup's head. "Air go in. Breathe."

The little alien looked up at him. "Bzup-kind breathe air. Bzup-kind breathe water."

Jem nodded. "But which is natural?"

Bzup offered a short buzz, which Jem knew meant he didn't quite understand.

"He knows best," Nico prompted. They had used the word to find out whether Bzup liked stonefish or gruff best, and stonefish had been the winning preference there. "Try that."

Jem nodded. "Bzup? Bzup like breathe air best, or breathe water best?"

The little alien raised a hand, and his three fingers waved slowly. "Bzup like breathe air best."

Nita emitted an excited little laugh, and Jem smiled at her. "There's your answer."

"They're air-breathers by preference, he seems to be saying, but they can also adapt to the ocean," she agreed, nodding.

"If he understood us right," Til said from the display, scratching his jaw contemplatively. "And if we understood him right!"

"I think we did," Nita said, thoughtfully "Let me revise the statement I just made. Our own genetic history reveals that our kind are descended from life that originated in the sea and slowly adapted to life on land. I would guess that life on Bzup's world began the same way. But as his genetic precursors evolved to live on land, they never lost the genetic coding that allowed for life in the sea. Some sort of conditions on his world required that his kind retain that ability."

"But not all the time, like a true amphibian," Deera reminded.

"No." Nita frowned. "It was apparently not an ability that was required on a daily basis. As we've seen, it takes several days to make the change in preparation for moving from one system to the other." She cocked her head at the catch manager, thinking. "There must have been substantial periods of time on Bzup's world where being equipped to breathe air was desirable, perhaps followed by other long periods of time where an ability to function in water was needed."

"How could that be?" Deera asked. "I can't quite imagine a single civilization arising in both biospheres simultaneously."

Nita turned to the chief engineer to voice a new notion. "Perhaps, on the world Bzup comes from, there were long stretches of time where life on land was possible, followed by long stretches where the land was submerged?"

"Flooding?" Mister Sharples wondered. "The seas rising, rather?" He squinted at the idea. "Well...maybe his world has an eccentric orbit that alternately carries it closer to, and then farther from, their star? Some portion of the polar ice caps might periodically melt on the inward leg of the orbit, and refreeze on the outbound leg?"

"An ice age every half-year?" Til asked. "That strains credulity, I think."

But the chief engineer shook his head. "You're thinking of a relatively short year, like Earth and Benteen enjoy. Some worlds have extremely long-period orbits. Suppose the years on Bzup's homeworld are very long? Centuries, by our standards, or even millennia?"

"But would these dry periods allow enough time to develop a technical civilization?" Deera asked. "At some point they would have needed to be capable of shielding their newfound technology from the rising seas."

The chief engineer grunted. "Human civilization went from the fairly primitive first mastering of electricity to star travel in less than five centuries of time. Once technology reaches a certain level, it blooms with astonishing swiftness. But, as to whether there was a long enough dry period for Bzup's kind to do the same thing--" Mr. Sharples smiled, and pointed at their guest. "He's here, isn't he?"

Everyone turned to stare in wonder at Bzup. The alien noted the group examination, and emitted a soft bzzz.

Jem smiled. "We're embarrassing him." He dropped a hand and gently touched the alien's hide. "Jem Bzup friend. Learn more about Bzup-kind. Bzup learn more about Jem-kind, too."

"Learn more all," the alien agreed pleasantly, his eye watching Jem with interest.

It was amazing how the addition of an eye made the little alien so much more expressive. Humans were tuned to measure others by eye-contact, to gather insights into their emotions and thinking from what their eyes revealed. That appraisal apparently worked with Bzup's kind, too. And, the little alien had picked up the meanings of a lot of human words just by examining their usage among his new friends. Their progress with communicating seemed to have reached a point where it was propelling itself.

Jem smiled and leaned closer to the alien. "Bzup stay with Jem?"

"For a while, anyway," Nita added quickly.

Jem nodded. "Bzup stay with Jem some tomorrows?"

The alien reached up a hand and touched Jem's sleeve. "Bzup stay with Jem some tomorrows."

Nico laughed, and Jem relaxed a little. Bzup had learned the concepts of tomorrow, and some, but numbers had thus far been confined to the digits on their hands.

Jem nodded. "One tomorrow...others come. Jem-kind, but not like Jem."

"Not like Jem?"

"Be careful with that," Til warned from the display. "It may be better not to say anything about their arrival at all."

Jem shook his head. "I think he needs to be prepared. I really don't think we should just spring Mikulsa on Bzup. He'll react to him like meeting one of the crew, and Mikulsa is not one of us."

Til sighed. "Well...maybe."

"Not like Jem?" Bzup repeated. "How?"

Jem licked his lips carefully. "This one think Bzup-kind not friend Jem-kind."

The large eye narrowed slightly, but Jem could see understanding there. "Some Bzup-kind not friend Jem-kind. But not Bzup. Not all."

Jaws dropped everywhere. Mister Sharples gave a stunned grunt. "You think he's referring to the attacks on our ships?"

It did sound like that. Jem gave a little shake of his head, trying to settle that notion. "Um...Bzup know ship like Vespris, but not Vespris? Jem-kind think lost. Jem-kind one come tomorrow think Bzup-kind do this."

The little alien watched him a moment, as if solidifying those words into something he better understood. Bzup looked around at the others, all watching him now. "Some Bzup-kind do this. Not Bzup. Not all."

Nico shook his head. "That's twice he's said that not all of his kind are involved. It is starting to sound like there may be some dissent among his people in how to deal with us."

Mister Sharples released a grunt. "Yes. But it does sound to me like he's admitting that at least some of his people had something to do with the disappearance of Chregar."

"It does sound like that, doesn't it?" a new voice asked. Heads turned as Master Terpin crossed the catch room to stand with them. "But it also sounds like Bzup is saying he was not involved in that encounter."

"Bzup not do," the alien repeated. "Bzup come Vezpriz."

All eyes turned back to the alien.

"Why Bzup come Vespris?" Nico asked.

"Bzup come talk Jem-kind. Learn."

Jem leaned forward then. "Bzup?"

"Jem?"

Jem glanced at Master Terpin before continuing, trying to think of how to phrase the question he wanted to ask. "Uh...where ship not-Vespris?"

"Where?"

Jem nodded. "Ship like Vespris...under water? Down?"

Bzup lifted a hand and flexed his three fingers again. That the gesture might have meaning was starting to sink in to Jem, but he couldn't be certain what that meaning was. "Down water?"

"Yes? Ship down, under water?"

"Under water?" Bzup repeated, clearly still trying to understand what Jem meant.

Jem looked quickly around the catch room, and then remembered the crate where they had stored the things they had been showing to the alien. There was a container in there, a bottle with a lid, that had contained a breakfast juice...

Jem turned and walked over to the crate, motioning Bzup and the others to follow. They moved as a group, and arrived with Jem as he lifted the top of the crate. He hunted around within, moving things, until he found the container. He took it over to the big tank where Bzup had been staying.

"Bzup look," Jem requested.

The alien came to stand beside him at the glass panel fronting the tank.

Jem bent, and held the bottle against the glass, right at the water line. He moved it slowly forward, as if sailing it upon the water. "Bzup. Vespris move on water. Sail."

"Zail," Bzup repeated, clearly understanding what Jem meant. "On water."

Jem nodded. He then stopped pushing the bottle forward, and slowly lowered it down the front of the glass, as if submerging it beneath the waves. "Ship now sink, fall under water."

"Zink under water," Bzup repeated, his eye showing comprehension now.

"Yes. Bzup? Ship not-Vespris...Bzup-kind sink?"

The alien let out an excited buzz. "Jem! Bzup kind not zink zhip, not-Vezpriz."

Several people let out gasps.

"Bzup," Jem continued, "Where Jem-kind from ship not-Vespris?"

The alien waved a hand again. "Jem-kind on zhip not-Vespriz."

Silence greeted that pronouncement.

And then Master Terpin slowly smiled in quite a calm way. "I see, then, Jem lad. It appears our new friends did not destroy Chregar as we first thought. They've captured her!"

"And her crew, it would seem," Mister Sharples added. "But why did they do it is the question now."

Jem nodded, and turned back to the alien. "Bzup? Ship-not Vespris is name Chregar."

"Zhregar?"

"Yes. Why Bzup-kind take Chregar?"

The answer was immediate. "Jem-kind on Zhregar zee Bzup-kind."

"They ran into each other somewhere!" Kel exclaimed.

"It does sound like an encounter of some sort," Nita agreed, excitedly.

"An unplanned encounter, I would say," Mister Sharples clarified. He nodded. "That makes sense. Bzup's people were doing something, somewhere out in the open, and Chregar happened along and found them at it."

Master Terpin nodded. "And at that point Bzup's people were not known to be here, and wanted to keep it that way."

"What about the blood in the lifeboat?" Deera asked.

"Someone didn't go along with being captured, I'd presume," Master Terpin guessed. "And refused to be taken back without a fight."

Jem was aghast at the idea. "So...this may not be what we thought? It might not be a deliberate act of war? Rather than deliberately attacking us, Bzup's people may have essentially panicked at being discovered, and captured Chregar in order to keep them from reporting what they had seen?"

"Let's not jump to conclusions," Til warned, from the display. "Although I will admit that we need to consider what Bzup says very carefully."

Nico sighed. "I wish we could understand each other better."

Nita smiled. "We are actually coming along amazingly fast dealing with the language barrier. Bzup's ability to reason things out is impressive."

"We all seem to be overlooking a clue," Master Terpin said then. "Or, even several of them."

All eyes turned to the man.

"A clue?" Kel repeated. "To what?"

"To the sequence of events that followed the capture of Chregar."

"What have you got?" Mister Sharples asked.

The master looked at Bzup, and then smiled at Jem. "Let's ponder a scenario." He steepled his hands a moment, and then nodded. "Bzup's people are someplace out in the open, doing...well, something. It would have to be something that clearly demonstrated that they were a technically advanced and alien civilization." He turned to smile again at Bzup. "Like that black disc that accosted us when we were taking Bzup off the hull. Suppose a craft like that was sitting out in the open, parked on the ice somewhere, while Bzup's people were performing some task, and Chregar just happened upon them?"

"Sailed right up on them?" Mister Sharples asked, narrowing his eyes in doubt. "Without being detected? Even our old-fashioned radar sensors would discern a ship sailing in the sea."

"On an unobstructed sea, yes," the master agreed. "But on a sea filled with icebergs, it might be far less noticeable."

The chief engineer snorted. "But Bzup's kind probably have much better sensors than we do."

The master shrugged. "Humor me. Maybe no one was even watching their sensors. Whatever happened, Chregar simply sailed right up to them unannounced, and spotted them at their task. Our visitors were then suddenly and unexpectedly presented with an accomplished fact. They had been discovered."

Deera waved a hand at the master. "But the evidence shows that Chregar was attacked by orx, not some black flying disc."

"Yes. And perhaps what Bzup's people were up to, there on the ice, was their first deployment of the riders, to see how effective they would be in controlling the orx. Until that point, none of our kind had met up with any rider-controlled orx. Where were they before Chregar encountered them? It stands to reason that what happened to Chregar happened because they arrived at a place where the orx were being controlled."

Mister Sharples turned to stare at Bzup. "A panicked reaction, to being caught unawares?"

"It doesn't seem that farfetched to me," Master Terpin responded. "Then consider what happened next."

Deera looked confused. "What happened next?"

The master smiled. "Nothing. No other ships were attacked. No other contact was made."

"We were attacked!" Til pointed out from the display. "I was there!"

The master nodded. "I know. But that came later, and if you will recall, it happened when we were near the pack ice."

"They came out and drew us towards it!" Til countered angrily.

"Yes. There were a great many rider-controlled orx at that spot. But...why co many, concentrated there? Unless that was the spot they were working from?"

"Working?" Nita repeated. "What sort of work?".

Master Terpin frowned. "I've been doing a great deal of thinking on the events leading up to this point. Something does not jibe with the idea that Bzup's people were planning to attack us with orx. I think they were using them for some other purpose."

Till snorted from the display. "Don't keep us in suspense!"

The master actually smiled at that. "A moment. I have come to the conclusion that we were attacked because we arrived where we did, when we did. Just the same as Chregar did earlier. That the orx came out after us when it seemed our course would lead us to something their masters did not want us to find."

"Like Chregar?" Jem hazarded to guess. "The missing ship, itself?"

The master nodded. "Exactly. Chregar, or their outpost...or both. You will remember that it was very shortly after that encounter that we discovered Bzup on the hull, and the black disc buzzed us as we were bringing him aboard."

"They knew we were about to capture one of their own," Deera pointed out.

"Did they?" Master Terpin turned to hold a hand out to Bzup. "Or, were they trying to thwart one of their own from contacting us?"

Jem took a breath of surprise, and turned to stare at Bzup along with the others. That Bzup had intended all along to be brought in off the hull was an idea Jem had wondered about. And it did seem to match some of what they had observed!

"Bzup was already dispensing with his water-breathing ocean needs, and replacing them with air-breathing, dry land needs when we captured him," Jem said. He smiled. "Or, when we invited him aboard." He turned back to Master Terpin. "He dropped the water jet, and whatever sort of system he used to obtain oxygen from water. As if he intended to be in a dry place very soon."

"More good reasoning, Jem-lad," the master replied. "And I agree. Bzup has said he came here to learn about us. I think he means that quite literally."

Deera shook her head. "So if Bzup's people weren't mounting riders on the orx to attack us, why were they doing it?"

"Food, perhaps?" Nita responded, looking at the master now, as if she had embraced his reasoning. "Orx are terrific hunters. They can ingest entire schools of fish, and bring some part of what they have ingested back up, to feed their young. The riders are in complete control of orx bodily functions. Having them do their food gathering would be a simple matter, and quite efficient."

Jem frowned at the idea of eating fish that had been regurgitated from the belly of an orx...but perhaps Bzup's people were not so squeamish? "It does sound like an idea," he admitted. He turned to Master Terpin. "So, we could have been wrong about this whole thing from the start?"

"It's an idea worth contemplating, Jem-lad. We have not been pursued--"

"That we know about!" Til broke in.

"--that we know about," the master continued smoothly, "and while orx could not keep up with us on steam, the black disc certainly could."

"It could be shadowing us, even now," Mister Sharples offered. "At the speed we're moving, its stealth coating and silent drive would not allow our sonar to pick it out of the background noise."

Til waved at them from the display. "Let's suppose that we were about to discover Chregar and their base, or whatever. Are you saying that Bzup's people intended to take Vespris, as well?"

"Their intent was surely to capture us, just as they had Chregar," Master Terpin supplied. He smiled at Jem. "Only the newly installed laser heads on deck thwarted that action."

Til let out a frustrated breath at that. "Then why attack us at the hunting stations? As if they meant to kill us!"

"I think I know," Nico spoke up. "I'll bet Chregar used her hunting armaments to put up a fight when they tried to take her. So the orx went right for them when they came aboard Vespris. They might have viewed taking out the hunting stations as disarming us!"

On the display, Til closed his eyes a moment, before sighing. "Actually, that makes a lot of sense." He opened his eyes. "So they may have simply meant to force us away from the hunt stations - or even injure or kill us - but spare the the vessel and the rest of the crew. That still suggests a fairly cold-blooded nature."

Kel cleared his throat then. "It sounds like something my great uncle would do, if he felt it needed doing. For survival, I mean."

Master Terpin nodded at that. "So, perhaps, these aliens are not so different from us, after all. Most of the human population on Benteen are peaceful people. But we do have a few hawks among the doves, like our Mister Mikulsa. It's surely one reason he is being sent out here. He, and those like him that remain among us, are about as close as we can manage anymore to a military staff capable of planning and acting in a war scenario."

Jem felt a shiver of cold at his back. "We don't want a war with Bzup's people."

"No, we don't." Master Terpin smiled. "T'was a good day you met me at the Orxhead, young Jem. And a grand joining you and Nico have made of yourselves. The two of you have become fine additions to Vespris." The man chuckled. "I am leaning towards keeping the both of you."

Kel raised a hand and smiled. "Here, here."

"You'll swell their heads," Nita warned, but with a grin their way.

"It will be good for them," Til said from the display, with some of his sense of humor returned. "Every youngster needs to have a swelled head at least once, so that reality can stick a pin in it at some point!"

Everyone laughed, including Jem and Nico. Nico dropped a hand on Jem's shoulder and squeezed it with affection. "I'll stay humble, if you will."

Jem nodded. "You don't have to worry about me. My head is whirling just now with all these ideas. I don't want it to be any larger!"

"A lot of what we have discussed does fit the facts," Til said. "But I'm still not convinced that it's the truth.There's the matter of the amount of debris found floating along with Chregar's lifeboat. It was enough to suggest the ship had been sunk."

Deera's eyes widened at that. "Or, to make it look like Chregar had sunk!"

"Yes." Til winced, but nodded. "It may have been something we would have done, ourselves, to convince an opponent that his ship had sunk. That would certainly forestall attempts to find it elsewhere."

"We should keep in mind that this is all conjecture," Deera said. "We don't really know what happened to Chregar."

Master Terpin nodded. "I agree completely. That vessel is equipped with a locator device, just as is Vespris. There has been no hint of that signal." He frowned slightly. "But we did need to break away from the idea that what happened was a deliberate act of war, and consider some alternatives. We have done that now, and I hope it will cause us to proceed more carefully."

"Someone needs to check this out," Til suggested then. "But not someone like Mikulsa and his armed Raptor. I don't want some hothead on our side to start a war, either!"

Master Terpin brought out his pad then, and tapped it with his fingertip. An inset appeared in the display, pushing the image of Til slightly to one side. It was a map of the northern ocean, with the current position of Vespris indicated by white dot, and a red dot blinking dot showing far astern of her current position.

"That's where the attack at the ice pack occurred." The master frowned ever so slightly. "If I were the leader of whatever alien mission was there, I would have moved it - and Chregar - to another location by now."

"But...where?" Jem asked.

The master sighed. "That, Jem-lad, is the big question. I would dearly love to return to that location and discover for myself. But we can't do it now."

"Maybe after our guests arrive?" Jem suggested.

"Perhaps." The master gave his head a swift, barely discernible shake, and then smiled at Jem. "Only time will tell."

 

* * * * * * *

 

By the time that Jem and Nico headed back to their cabin, they were exhausted. There had been further discussion on what to do next, now that they suspected that Chregar was still afloat and at least most of her crew were still alive. No action could be attempted until after they had met with the grav flyer carrying Varin Mikulsa and Ana Barasesh the next day. But that Master Terpin had some plan in mind to retrace their steps and look for Chregar seemed obvious.

Nico sat on the edge of his bunk and sighed. "I'm tired."

"You came by it honestly," Jem said, sitting next to his boyfriend and placing an arm gently around his waist. He leaned over and kissed Nico on the cheek. "We had a long day."

Nico nodded, and blew out a small, tired breath. "I'm still on edge about those two coming from Hennessy tomorrow. I'm worried about Bzup."

"Me, too." But Jem brightened then. "Master Terpin won't let anything happen to Bzup. The law is on Bzup's side. He can demonstrate that he's sentient and sapient, while Mikulsa and Barasesh can't prove otherwise. The law says that even if such a declaration of A-Prime is contested, everyone has to act as if it's true until proven it's not."

"I'm certain Bzup is person," Nico said, leaning his head against Jem's. "And that he's decent and caring, and that's why he's here. I think he didn't approve of the way his people were acting towards us, and set out to try something he thought was better."

"Peaceful contact would be a better alternative, certainly," Jem agreed. "I don't want the future histories of Benteen to have to recount how we met Bzup's people by warring with them."

At that moment, the steady background whir of the ship's turbines faded and went silent. They were used to the sound, and scarcely noticed it most of the time. But its absence now was telling.

Into this relative silence a new sound was injected - the faraway clack,clack, clack of the masts deploying their sheets.

Jem gasped. "Have we just gone to sail?"

Nico opened his mouth to answer, but snapped it closed again as a chirping sound filled the room, followed by Moira Hatta's voice: "Attention. Sonar contact. Will all crew please report to their stations. Attention--" "

Nico's jaw dropped in surprise. "We've found another orx!"

Jem stood up, and smiled down at Nico. "At least we're already dressed!"

Nico also stood, and shook his head. "My eyes are halfway closed already! I hope I can do my job!"

"The adrenaline will wake you up! Come on - grab your gear!"

They donned their cold-weather clothing and applied their face masks, and actually beat Mya to the weather door this time.

She arrived only moments after them and grinned at the boys, donning her own mask. "That's the way it's done! Now, let's go see what we have!"

Outside, they split up, with Mya heading for the starboard hunt station, and Jem and Nico going to the port station. Jem waved the console into activity as they arrived before it, and the icons of an orx crowding a large school of stonefish appeared in the sonar display. Vespris was turning now into a silent pursuit.

"Just the one, it seems," Nico said, peering carefully at the console. "Look! It's turning away from the stonefish!"

"It's heard us, I think," Jem supplied.

"I think so, too," Mya said from the console. "It will twist and turn a little now to see if we follow. Once it's certain it's being hunted, look for it to go deep."

That's just what happened. The orx turned away from them, nimble and quick on its water jet. Vespris, now under the guidance of Master Terpin, turned deftly to follow. The orx immediately darted the other way, and the ship followed. This occurred six or seven times, with Vespris slowly narrowing the gap between hunter and prey, before the icon on the screen suddenly dimmed.

"He's diving!" Jem called.

The orx was on Mya's side at the moment. They heard a sudden hiss as a spread of prods was launched, which hit the water almost instantly and sped beneath the diving orx. They detonated, and the icon of the orx brightened immediately as it fled upward with the pressure wave.

"He's coming over to you!" Mya called.

The orx moved with amazing speed and raced beneath the hull of Vespris to its port side, and turned immediately towards the stern. The vessel passed the orx and the distance between them immediately began to open again. Jem darted out a hand and waved it over the sensors on the display, and their own hunting head spun aft and hissed as a spread of prods flew off after the orx. Vespris simply could not do a complete about-face so quickly, and the orx could get away if its path were not altered again.

The prods outraced the orx and plummeted into the ocean ahead of it, and dived beneath the animal before going off. The icon that was the orx in the display swung about with incredible swiftness, darted to one side, and then reversed course with the same stunning speed, and immediately brightened in the display.

"He's coming up--!" Nico began. "Oh, look!"

In the sonar display, the orx had changed directions again, first heading at an angle that would take him back to Mya's side of the ship, but then just as quickly spinning about and heading directly aport from Vespris. The masts above them whirred as they spun in their gimbals, and the ship leaned into a tight turn to port. In only moments the orx was ahead of them again, and they were overtaking it quickly.

In his mind's eye, Jem was adding up the moves the orx had made thus far. He knew its hearing was acutely directional, and that the beast would even now be getting a feel for what Vespris might do next. They were again closing the distance from the animal's right rear quarter, which meant the best course was for the orx to dodge hard right and try to go beneath the ship once again. "Mya!" Jem called. "I have a feeling he will turn to you next!"

She didn't waste time asking questions, and when the orx did indeed dart to starboard, she was ready.

"Now!" Jem said under his breath, as the optimum distance was reached.

The display showing actions on Mya's side of the vessel lit for capture lances and shockers, as two of her mounts hissed and buzzed and the two sets of powered arms fired away into the sea. Jem held his breath, watching as the devices closed the distance with a speed only technology could muster, until--

"Contact!" Nico yelled, jumping up and down with excitement.

The ship suddenly slowed as the sails stowed above them with a series of clacks, and the turbines spun up again to power the reverse thrusters. Vespris leaned into a tight circle around her catch while it was reeled in to touch the hull.

"Great job!" Jem called, turning to grin across the deck at Mya. The woman looked pleased, and offered them a thumbs-up.

Nico patted Jem on the back, and they smiled delightedly at each other in the glow from the display, before turning back to scan the sonar neighborhood. There were various schools of food fish in evidence, witnesses to their own hunter's destruction; but no other orxs were within range. Since orx most often hunted alone, that was no surprise at all.

The work lights came up on deck, and the big double doors forward of their position rumbled apart. Deera and her drones came up on the elevator, and trouped across to Mya's side of the vessel.

"Long range scans look clear, lads," the master's voice said from the display. "If you'd care to go and watch the retrieval."

"Yes, sir!" Nico patted Jem's arm. "Let's go!"

They reached Mya's side as Deera's drones were going over the side. The carcass of the orx was nestled against the hull of Vespris, and even to Jem's eye it looked like a large one.

"Seventeen tons if it's a gram," Deera said, smiling at them. She glanced down at her pad, which held a number of inputs from the drone's optical sensors. "And, by the absence of scarring on its hide, I'd say this is a fairly young bull, too."

Nico leaned forward to peer at the small screen. "Any riders?"

"Not a one." Deera looked pleased at that pronouncement. "This does sort of suggest that Bzup's people were just operating in that small area where they attacked us. And that does sound much more to me to me like a food-gathering operation, and not the grooming of an army for war."

"This one acted totally normal," Mya agreed. She turned to Jem. "It certainly doesn't appear now that Bzup's people are trying to surround New Australia with hostile orx, anyway."

"Or, we just caught them in the early stages of building their forces," Nico said, with a hint of a smile.

The women turned to stare at him, and Jem immediately laughed. "Don't mind him. He's just sticking a fork in you to see if you're done!"

Nico grinned then, and Mya smiled. Deera rolled her eyes dramatically, but the good feeling in them was clear.

No more orx with riders had been found. Jem was certain that was an important indicator of the intentions of Bzup's kind.

He remembered his own first impression then, when he'd first heard about Chregar, that the orx were banding together somehow to protect themselves from humans. Part of that idea had been based on his own knowledge about the recent strange activities of some of the siffle of the mountains, and another part had been due to his unformed view of Benteen as just the greatest place of mystery imaginable, capable of hiding any motivation within the depths of its shadows.

It reminded him that he wanted to talk to Nita about the way the mountain siffle had been acting. Jem and his father had not seen anything on any of their catches that even remotely resembled a rider, and such an addition simply couldn't be missed in the skinning process. So what was actually going on there?

He sighed. In just the short time he had been at sea aboard Vespris, his world view had changed once more. Animals could be complex in their interactions with humans, but nothing seemed quite as complicated as the interactions between people. Human people - and otherwise.

But orx, clearly now, were not people.

"A fine addition to our freezers," Master Terpin said over the com. "Let's get him aboard, and be back on our way to meeting our visitors."

Mya's eyebrows went up at the slightly sour note that attended the last word of Master Terpin's sentence. "Anything new on that front?" she asked carefully.

"Yes. A message from Mikulsa a short while ago, acknowledging our report on Bzup's A-Prime status. He seems to think it was a premature judgment, and that he will be better qualified to appraise the situation than we are." The man offered a gentle laugh. "I had the impression that he was annoyed with us."

Nico hissed at that. "Too bad!"

"They asked us to have Bzup ready to meet with them upon their arrival," the master continued. "It sounds to me as if they are prepared to not be courteous, if required."

Jem's eyes widened at that. "Have him ready? They act like he's our prisoner!"

"Indeed. I informed them that he was a visiting alien emissary, and not our prisoner. The reply was short and somewhat curt, but to the effect that nothing had been determined just yet." Master Terpin issued forth a small sigh. "Worry not, Jem-lad. We don't have any real idea yet how this will play out. If anyone can give a good account of himself, it's Bzup. But, if he fails to properly impress our guests, well, then, I suppose we will just have to impress them for him!"