Resurgence

“I hear you, Captain Rebka,” he said at last. “And yes, I admit that so far you have been given little or nothing to do. That does not change my opinion. I possess a deep inner conviction that at some point you will prove to be essential to the success—even the survival—of this group.”

“Doing what? How can I be needed for survival, when you brought along your own specialist survival team to ensure that?”

Hans Rebka’s tone was sarcastic. He had met the “survival specialists” just before the ship made the final Bose transition to the great, frigid stellar system within which the Pride of Orion now floated. He had been appalled—appalled at their youth, at their lack of experience in dangerous situations, and most of all by their utter self-confidence. If you wanted to get yourself killed, there was no better way than to think you knew all the tricks. It took experience to make you realize that the universe could always pull another one out of the bag and throw it at you.

The irony of his words was lost on Julian Graves. The councilor frowned, pondered, and replied, “It is difficult for a logical mind to accept the idea that a redundancy of talents for survival might be a bad thing. In any case, my belief does not stem from logic alone. It draws also from personal experience. You saved my life in the past, not once but at least three times. I rely upon you to do it again.”

So far as Graves was concerned, that ended the conversation. It was left to Hans Rebka to grit his teeth and sit on the edge of his seat when the Pride of Orion, signal beacon turned on and a dozen transmission devices blaring to betray its presence, made its Bose transition to a new stellar system which Hans had every reason to suspect might be dangerous.

That upon their arrival it seemed more dead than dangerous was nothing for which Hans or anyone else on board could take credit. He was wary as the survival team children—his term for them—oohed and aahed over observations of the cold, dark star and its frozen retinue of planets. The return of the signal beacon from the Have-It-All was less reassuring to him than to anyone else on board. He knew, even if they did not, that Louis Nenda had silenced the beacon and all other emanations from his ship until the crude but shrewd Karelian human felt there was no immediate danger. The Pride of Orion must have helped, a sacrificial goat that had bleated its beacon message non-stop from the moment of its arrival in the new stellar system.

Now Nenda was here, on board the Pride of Orion, and Hans didn’t think for a moment that he had come to help. Nenda was here to improve his own chances of survival—and who could blame him?

Hans nodded a wary greeting as Nenda arrived. He placed himself at a point in the meeting room where the two men could keep an eye on each other. Behind Nenda, towering over everyone, was the Cecropian, Atvar H’sial. The twin yellow horns on the eyeless white head moved constantly from side to side. Hans knew that those horns received return signals from high-frequency sonic pulses emitted by the pleated resonator on Atvar H’sial’s chin. They provided the Cecropian with vision through echolocation. What else they received, and whether or not human speech could be collected and interpreted, was anyone’s guess. Atvar H’sial’s slave and interpreter, the Lo’tfian J’merlia, was not present. He must have remained behind on Nenda’s ship. How much could Nenda, with his pheromonal augment, tell the Cecropian of what was going on?

Louis Nenda was not about to say. He remained as silent as his Cecropian partner while Julian Graves introduced to them the five members of the survival specialist team.

“Ben Blesh, Torran Veck, Lara Quistner, and Teri Dahl.” Graves waved a hand at the five, two men and three women sitting in a tight group. “And Sinara Bellstock, whom you have already met.”

Nenda nodded. From his inscrutable smile, Rebka decided that the man was as underwhelmed as Rebka himself by the youthful “survival specialists.” Nenda was squat and grubby and uncouth, but as the man at your back in a crisis you’d choose him over all five.

“We are here,” Graves went on, “but clearly we are not where any of us expected to be. This is not the Marglotta system. Therefore we must decide what to do next. To aid in that, we should pool any new knowledge. Mr. Nenda, perhaps you would begin by telling us what you and your associates have learned. I assume that you will be happy to speak for all.”

Nenda’s smile vanished. Starting the ball rolling was obviously not his first choice, and from the way that the Cecropian behind him reared up and back, the information had been passed by Nenda to her and was not welcomed.

“Mr. Nenda?”