McCaffrey, Anne - The Ship 03 - The Ship Who Searched (with Mercedes Lackey) 1.1a

371 Pages·2016·0.88 MB·English

by  Lackey Mercedes

THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED
By: Anne McCaffrey
Copyright 1992
Version 1.1

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are
fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 1992 by Bill Fawcett and Associates

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book portions thereof in
any form.
A Baen Books Original
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471

ISBN: 0-671-72129-1
Cover art by Stephen Hickman

First printing, August 1992
Second printing, April 1994
Distributed by Paramount Publishing
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

Printed in the United States of America
THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED
CHAPTER ONE

The ruby light on the com 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 someone Upstairs, waiting for her
to open the channel.

Someone Upstairs meant an unscheduled ship. Tia knew very well when all
the scheduled 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 variables, and pushed her stool
over to the com console so she could reach all the touch-pads when she stood on
it. She would never have been able to reach things sitting 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 enunciated carefully, for the
microphone was old, and often lost anything not spoken clearly. “Exploratory
Team Cee-One-Two-One, receiving. 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 unscheduled 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 Salomon-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 little
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 message 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 little. The last time Moira had
been here, her designation had been CM, not TM. “Moira, what happened to
Charlie?” Her seven 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 little 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 sequence, 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 sequence, Moira. Uh, what did you bring me? Over,”

“Oh, you bright little 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 systems 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 disable 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 birthday 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-
Forensics, Doctor of Xenology, Doctor of Archeology), and her husband
Braddon Maartens-Cade (Doctor of Science in Geology, Doctor of Physics in
Cosmology, Associate Degree in Archeology, and licensed Astrogator) had in
common, besides daughter Hypatia and their enduring, if absentminded 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 sixteen hundred. And at precisely nineteen hundred, the Cades
returned from the dig for dinner together.

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-un-met