McCaffrey, Anne - BB Ship 03 - The Ship Who Searched - with Mercedes Lackey.pdf - Anne McCaffrey - aro164

The ship who searched

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Anne McCaffrey - Tsw 2 The Ship Who Searched

By Anne McCaffrey and Mercedes Lackey

Chapter ONE

The ruby light on the corn unit was blinking when Hypatia Cade emerged from beneath

the tutor's hood, with quadratic equations dancing before her seven- year-old eyes. Not the

steady blink that meant a recorded message, nor the triple-beat that meant Mum or Dad had

left her a note, but the double blink with a pause between each pair that meant there was

some- one Upstairs, waiting for her to open the channel.

Someone Upstairs meant an unscheduled ship — Ha knew very well when all the sched-

uled visits were; they were on the family calendar and were the first things reported by the AI

when they all had breakfast That made it Important for her to answer, quickly, and not take

the time to suit up and run to the dig for Mum or Dad. It must not have been an emergency,

though, or the AI would have interrupted her lesson.

She rubbed her eyes to rid them of the dancing vari- ables, and pushed her stool over to

the corn-console so she could reach all the touch-pads when she stood on it. She would nev-

er have been able to reach things sit- ting in a chair, of course. With brisk efficiency that

someone three times her age might have envied, she cleared the board, warmed up the relay,

and opened the line.

'Exploratory Team Cee-One-Two-One," she enun- oated carefully, for the microphone was

old, and often 'ost anything not spoken clearly. "Exploratory Team ^ee-One-Two-One, receiv-

ing. Come in, please. Over."

She counted out the four-second lag to orbit and back, nervously. One-hypotenuse, Two-

hypotenuse, Three- hypotenuse, Four-hypotenuse. Who could it be? They didn't get unsched-

uled ships very often, and it meant bad news as often as not. Planet pirates, plague, or

slavers. Trouble with some of the colony-planets. Or worse — artifact thieves in the area. A

tiny dig like this one was all too vulnerable to a hit-and-run raid. Of course, digs on the Sa-

lomon-Kildaire Entities rarely yielded anything a collector would lust after, but would thieves

know that? Tia had her orders if raiders came and she was alone — to duck down the hidden

escape tunnel that would blow the dome; to run to the dark lit- tle hidey away from the dig that

was the first thing Mum and Dad put in once the dome was up....

"This is courier TM Three-Seventy. Tia, dearest, is that you? Don't worry, love, we have a

non-urgent mes- sage run and you're on the way, so we brought you your packets early.

Over." The rich, contralto voice was a bit flattened by the poor speaker, but still welcome and

familiar, Tia jumped up and down a bit on her

stool in excitement.

"Moira! Yes, yes, it's me! But — " She frowned a litde. The last time Moira had been here,

her designation had been CM, not TM. "Moira, what happened to Charlie?" Her sev-

en-year-old voice took on the half-scolding tones of someone much older. "Moira, did you

scare away another brawn? Shame on you! Remember what they told you when you kicked

Ari out your airlock! Uh—over."

Four seconds; an eternity. "I didn't scare him away, darling," Moira replied, though Tia

thought she sounded just a litde guilty. "He decided to get married, raise a brood of his own,

and settle down as a dirtsider.

Don't worry, this will be the last one, I'm sure of it.

Tomas and I get along famously. Over."

"That's what you said about Charlie," Tia reminded her darkly. "And about Ari, and Lilian,

and Jules, and — "

She was still reciting names when Moira interrupted her. "Turn on the landing beacon, Tia,

please. We can talk when I'm not burning fuel in orbital adjustments." Her voice turned a little

bit sly. "Besides, I brought you a birthday present. That's why I couldn't miss stopping here.

Over."

As if a birthday present was going to distract her from the litany of Moira's foiled attempts

to settle on a brawn!

Well — maybe just a little.

She turned on the beacon, then feeling a little smug, activated the rest of the landing se-

quence, bringing up the pad lights and guidance monitors, then hooking in the AI and letting it

know it needed to talk to Moira's navigational system. She hadn't known how to do all that,

the last time Moira was here. Moira'd had to set down with no help at all.

She leaned forward for the benefit of the mike. "All clear and ready to engage landing se-

quence, Moira. Uh — what did you bring me? Over,"

"Oh, you bright litde penny!" Moira exclaimed, her voice brimming with delight. "You've got

the whole system up! You have been learning things since I was here last! Thank you,

dear—and you'll find out what I brought when I get down there. Over and out."

Oh well, she had tried. She jumped down from her stool, letting the AI that ran the house

and external sys- tems take over the job of bringing the brainship in. Or rather, giving the

brainship the information she needed to bring herself in; Moira never handed over her helm to

anyone if she had a choice in the matter. That was part of the problem she'd had with keeping

brawns. She didn't trust them at the helm, and let them know that. Ari, in particular, had been

less than amused with her attitude and had actually tried to dis- able her helm controls to

prove he could pilot as well as she.

Now, the next decision: should she suit up and fetch Mum and Dad? It was no use trying

to get them on the com; they probably had their suit-speakers off. Even though they weren't

supposed to do that And this wasn't an emergency; they would be decidedly annoyed if she

buzzed in on them, and they found out it was just an unscheduled social call from a courier

ship, even if it was Moira. They might be more than annoyed if they were in the middle of

something important, like documenting a find or running an age-assay, and she joggled their

elbows.

Moira didn't say it was important She wouldn't have talked about errant brawns and birth-

day presents if what she carried was really, really earth-shaking.

Tia glanced at the clock; it wasn't more than a half hour until lunch break. If there was one

thing that Pota Andropolous-Cade (Doctor of Science in Bio-Foren- sics, Doctor of Xenology,

Doctor of Archeology), and her husband Braddon Maartens-Cade (Doctor of Science in Geo-

logy, Doctor of Physics in Cosmology, Associate Degree in Archeology, and licensed As-

trogator) had in common — besides daughter Hypatia and their enduring, if absent-minded

love for each other — it was punctuality. At precisely oh-seven- hundred every "morning," no

matter where they were, the Cades had breakfast together. At precisely twelve-hundred, they

arrived at the dome for lunch together. The AI saw that Hypatia had a snack at six- teen-

hundred. And at precisely nineteen-hundred, the Cades returned from the dig for dinner to-

gether.

So in thirty minutes, precisely, Pota and Braddon would be here. Moira couldn't possibly

land in less than twenty minutes. The visitor — or visitors; there was no telling if there was

someone on board besides the brawn, the yet-unmet Tomas — would not have long to wait.

She trotted around the living room of the dome; picking up her books and puzzles,

straightening the pillows on the sofa, turning on lights and the holo- scape of waving blue

trees by a green lagoon on Mycon, where her parents had met. She told the kitchen to start

coffee, overriding the lunch program to instruct it to make selection V-l, a setup program Brad-

don had logged for her for munchies for visitors. She decided on music on her own; theArken-

stone Suzte, a lively synthesizer piece she thought matched the holo-mural.

There wasn't much else to do, so she sat down and waited — something she had learned

how to do very early. She thought she did it very well, actually. There had certainly been

enough of it in her life. The lot of an archeologists' child was full of waiting, usually alone, and

required her to be mosdy self-sufficient.

She had never had playmates or been around very many children of her own age. Usually

Mum and Dad were alone on a dig, for they specialized in Class One Evaluation sites; when

they weren't, it was usually on a Class Two dig, Exploratory. Never a Class Three Excavation

dig, with hundreds of people and their families. It wasn't often that the other scientists her par-

ents' age on a Class Two dig had children younger than their teens. And even those were

usually away somewhere at school.

She knew that other people thought that the Cades were eccentric for bringing their

daughter with them on every dig — especially so young a child. Most parents with a remote

job to do left their offspring with relatives or sent them to boarding schools. Tia listened to the

adults around her, who usually spoke as if she couldn't understand what they were talking

about She learned a great deal that way; probably more even than her Mum and Dad suspec-

ted.

One of the things she overheard — quite frequently, in fact — was that she seemed like

something of an afterthought. Or perhaps an "accident" — she'd over- heard that before, too.

She knew very well what was meant by the "after- thought or accident" comment. The last

time someone had said that, she'd decided that she'd heard it often enough.

It had been at a reception, following the reading of several scientific papers. She'd

marched straight up to the lady in question and had informed her solemnly that she, Tia, had

been planned very carefully, thank you. That Braddon and Pota had determined that their ca-

reers would be secure just about when Pota's biological clock had the last few seconds on it,

and that was when they would have one, singular, female child. Herself. Hypatia. Planned

from the beginning. From the leave-time to give birth to the way she had been brought on

each assignment; from the pressure-bubble glove- box that had served as her cradle until she

could crawl, to the pressure-tent that became a crib, to the kind of AI that would best perform

the dual functions of tutor and guardian.

The lady in question, red-faced, hadn't known what to say. Her escort had tried to laugh it

away, telling her that the "child" was just parroting what she'd over- heard and couldn't pos-

sibly understand any of it.

Whereupon Tia, well-versed in the ethnological habits — including courtship and mating

— of four separate sapient species, including homo sap., had proceeded to prove that he was

wrong.

Then, while the escort was still spluttering, she had turned back to the original offender

and informed her, with earnest sincerity, that she had better think about having her children

soon, too, since it was ob- vious that she couldn't have much more time before menopause.

Tia had, quite literally, silenced that section of the room. When reproached later for her

behavior by the host of the party, Tia had been completely unrepentant "She was being rude

McCaffrey, Anne - BB Ship 03 - The Ship Who Searched - with Mercedes Lackey.pdf

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