Infinity's Shore

The exploser shook his head. “Fools or liars. Either they have no sense of timing, or else they were in on it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, a ship passed overhead all right, and gave us a look-over. Then it went on its way. ’Twas most of a midura later that a gang of ’em came down, farmers mostly. They knocked the seals off some of my charges, under one of the piers of the dam, and laid a torch against it.”

Nelo blinked. “What did you say?” He stared, then blinked again. “But who …?”

Henrik had a one-word answer.

“Jop.”

Lark

THE EXPLORERS EMERGED TRIUMPHANT, RESURFACING from the chill lake into the cave, having brought back almost everything they sought. But bad news awaited them.

Fatigue lay heavily on Lark, while helpers stripped the diving gear and toweled him off.

Tense sadness filled the voice of the human corporal, reporting what had happened in Lark’s absence.

“It hit our grays all at once — wheezing up lots of bubbly phlegm. Then a couple of young blues got it, too. We sent ’em to a pharmacist topside, but word says the plague is getting worse up there. There may not be much time.”

Attention turned to the Danik women who had just barely escaped from the trapped ship. They still looked woozy from their experience — starting with a blast of highpressure water that had burst into the airlock when the fissure broke through at last. After that came a hurried, nightmarish squeeze through the briefly dilated opening, squirming desperately before the tunnel could close and immure their bodies in liquid time like the poor g’Keks of Dooden Mesa.

Watching quantum-shifted images of that tight passage nearly unnerved Lark. Instead of two human figures, they looked like jumbled body parts, writhing through a tube that kept shifting around them. One woman he briefly saw with her insides on the outside, offering unwanted knowledge about her latest meal.

Yet here they were, alive in front of him. Overcoming residual nausea, the two escapees kept their side of the bargain, setting to work right away on a small machine they had brought along. In exchange for a cure, Jijoans would help more of their crew mates break out of the trapped ship, then coordinate joint action against the Jophur — no doubt something quite desperate, calling for a pooling of both groups’ slim knowledge and resources, plus a generous dollop of Ifni’s luck.

This whole enterprise had been Lark’s idea … and he gave it the same odds as a ribbit walking unscathed through a ligger’s den.

“Symptoms?” asked the first woman, with hair a shade of red Lark had never seen on any Jijoan.

“Don’t you know already what bug it is?” Jeni Shen demanded.

“A variety of pathogens were kept in stock aboard the research station,” answered the other one, a stately brunette who seemed older than any other Danik Lark had seen. She looked a statuesque forty, and might be two centuries old.

“If Ro-kenn did release an organism from that supply,” she continued, “we must pin down which one.”

Even having stripped off his rewq, he had no trouble reading fatalistic reluctance in her voice. By helping solve the plague, she was in effect confessing that Ro-kenn had attempted genocide … and that their ship routinely carried the means for such a crime. Perhaps, like Ling, she had been in the dark about all that till now. Only utter helplessness would have forced the Rothen to reveal so much to their human servants, as well as to the sooners of Jijo.

From the look on Rann’s face, the tall star warrior disagreed with the decision, and Lark knew why.

It goes beyond mere morality and crimes against Galactic law. Our local qheuens and hoons have relatives out there, among the stars. If word of this gets out, those home populations might declare vendettas against the Rothen. Or else, with this evidence, Earth might file suit to reclaim the Danik population group that the Rothen have kept secreted away for two centuries.

Of course that assumes Earth still lives. And there’s still law in the Five Galaxies.

Rann clearly felt the risk too great. Ship and crew should have been sacrificed to keep the secret.

Tough luck, Rann, Lark thought. Apparently your fellow spacers would rather live.

While Ling described the disease that ravaged Uthen before her eyes, Lark overheard Rann whisper impatiently to Jeni Shen.

“If we are to get the others out, it must be a complete job! There are weapons to transfer, and supplies. The traeki formula must be duplicated aboard ship, in order to make a durable passageway—”

Jeni interrupted sharply.

“After we verify a cure, starman. Or else your compadres and their master race can sit in their own dung till Jijo grows cold, for all we care.”

Colorful, Lark thought, smiling grimly.

Soon the machine was programmed with all the relevant facts.

“Many hoons are showing signs of a new sickness, too,” Ling reminded.

“We’ll get to that,” said the redhead. “This will take a min or two.”