The audio channels were full of excited chirping as Carialle and the Cridi ship shifted into orbit over the griffin homeworld.
"We are here!" Tall Eyebrow exclaimed with delight from the crash couch where he was strapped in with Big Eyes. "We have succeeded in reaching this place, all together and with no mishap."
Keff watched as on-screen the clouds parted gently beneath them to reveal a vast and mountainous continent, wedge-shaped, strung from north to south like a harp with silver rivers. On the horizon ahead, a small silver moon rose. Carialle hurtled onward until it passed overhead, and set behind them. A second, larger moon followed, and vanished in turn. A blue ocean swam up, flashed green islands at them, and was replaced by another continent, long and narrow, also mountainous. Keff could see lines of smoke from active volcanoes. Another ocean glided by, this one wider than the first, then the harp reappeared, much closer and larger. Cities showed up in the folds of the mountains, very near the peaks. On extreme magnification, Carialle saw small craft flying, then realized she was seeing griffins on the wing. She showed Keff and the Cridi, who cheeped and peeped over the marvel.
Keff, listening as Carialle monitored active broadcast frequencies for a homing signal, caught Big Voice giving a live play-by-play of the new planet for the benefit of listeners on his homeworld.
"Eleven to the sixth power inhabitants, five oceans, two major continents, but many archipelagoes. Signs are humidity equals point-one atmosphere," Big Voice stated, with great emphasis on the statistics. "It will be uncomfortably dry and hot, but the landing party is prepared for eventualities."
Keff grinned and turned to catch the eyes of the Cridi flying with him.
"Always," Big Eyes said, exasperation evident on her small face. She waved her hands in derisive gesture.
Long Hand watched Carialle's telemetry indicators. "So dry," she said. "It is like Ozran. Some in the other ship will never have experienced such conditions."
"Well, you'll be in water globes," Keff said. "That is, after I make contact and establish parley conditions. I don't want you appearing until I'm sure no one is going to attack us."
"Huh," Small Spot grunted, and raised his hand to show the gleaming finger stalls. "I do not fear. We have the Cores."
"Don't manifest anything that looks like a threat," Keff said.
Tall Eyebrow was studying the astrogation tank carefully, measuring the distance between the two stars that they had just crossed.
"So close. It is a great pity," he said. "These people could have been friends of Cridi and Ozran."
"They still could be," Keff reminded him. "Try to keep an open mind. It may be a fringe group of criminals who've been robbing spaceships. If the government promises to punish the pirates, you could still establish friendly relations—form a Mythological Federation of Planets."
"If they themselves are not involved," Tall Eyebrow said, his small face thoughtful.
The ship rounded the planet twice more at high altitude before beginning to drop. The harp separated into successive bands of tan and blue.
"I've pinpointed the largest population centers," Carialle said, illuminating the planetary map, "but in spite of Keff's suggestions I don't want to land right in the thick of things. Some nice suburban location . . . X marks the spot. I think I detected a flat place I can land."
A blue dot began to glow on the chart about fifty kilometers outside one of the large cities. Narrow Leg's navigator glanced up from her console at the screen nearest him, and nodded to Keff. "Defenses are in place. Yours, too."
"Right," Keff said, taking a deep breath. "Down we go."
Narrow Leg's ship had dropped back to ride into the lower atmosphere on Carialle's tail. Watching her waveform monitor, she was pleased by the precision that the pilot showed, not getting too close and endangering them both, but staying just far enough back that the end of the elongated oval envelope just nipped his afterburners. You'd think he'd been doing it all his life. The hull sensors went off, indicating Carialle's skin temperature had risen to normal reentry temperatures. She checked the hull for leaks in either the skin plates or in the cooling pods underneath. All was well. The Cridi pilot signalled that he would stay in long orbit, and wished Carialle well.
"We will wait for word to come," he said in creditable Standard.
"See you downstairs," Carialle said, as the Cridi braked, and sailed on above her head.
Her last, long approach was almost entirely over ocean. She descended very quickly, keeping her speed up until the last minute. She hadn't noticed any telemetry beacons, nor radar signals, as if there wasn't a single ear pointed toward space. Strange when you considered that these people were parasites, preying on the isolated Cridi, that they wouldn't be more cautious about invasion of their own airspace. If she'd had functioning saliva glands, she'd have spat.
"All well, Cari?" Keff asked.
"Yes," she said crisply, increasing visual magnification and turning it toward her chosen landing site. "Are you certain we shouldn't land in a covert location? It's possible. Unless that clunky communication system is concealing a much more sophisticated technology underneath, no one can see me."
"No," Keff said. He had prepared his environment suit and kit before strapping in for approach. The light, transparent gloves flapped loose at his wrists as he clutched the ends of his couch arms. "We're not going in to study them. We're entering as envoys of peace, I hope. If nothing else, this will put them on notice that we have observed their people's crimes, and demand cessation of hostilities. What can they do? Attack the entire CW?"
"It looks as if that was just what they have been doing," Carialle said softly. "One ship at a time. Be careful."
"As Big Voice and the other Cridi are always reminding me, lady, we have the Cores. I'll be fine."
Unsatisfied, Carialle returned the greater part of her attention to what lay ahead. Gravity was approximately 1.2 times Standard. That meant those griffin wings had to lift just that much more and stay aloft in very windy skies. They were strong. Keff didn't have the advantage he'd had on the base, when they were all fighting that oppressive gravity. He would tire more quickly than they. Carialle maintained respect for the griffins' musculature, having studied the scans all the way from one star to the other. She was trying hard not to admire the fact their bodies, from about the shoulders back looked like a Terran great cat, a species which she was fond of watching for its grace. And those claws and teeth!
Beneath her, the tiny islands flitted by. Volcanic in nature, they had been augmented in size by the growth of a calcifying organism like coral, but less acid sensitive. Her imagination and pattern recognition aptitude saw in the shapes of the most proximate four islets a dragonfly, a chick, an old-fashioned handbag, and a ketchup bottle. Vegetation on the islands was of the same gaudy colors as in the pirate base conservatory; not as vivid, but healthier. That heavy-ammonia atmosphere must not have been good for griffin-world plant life, either. The trace in this air was much, much lower, below half a percent. Keff could almost get along with just eyedrops and nose filters, but she insisted he wear a full envirosuit. She knew she was being too protective, like a mother running after her child with overshoes. Keff meant so much to her she felt an unhealthy twinge of fear at the thought that the griffins might be able to get past the Cridi's impressive shield and harm him. Quickly, she purged toxins from her internal system, and allowed a dose of serotonin and stimulants to enter her bloodstream. She felt better at once. Keff wasn't a child. He had had plenty of experience in worse situations than this. He always sounded as if he was about to do something rash, but he also possessed a healthy sense of self-preservation.
Carialle passed over the sandy coast, parting the tree-oids in her wake. She was low enough now that the fliers had noticed her, and some winged to catch up. With a burst of speed for which she immediately chided herself as arrogant, she lost them over the first mountain range. There she noticed broadcast towers, of a design that hadn't been used by the Central Worlds in a thousand years or more.
"Do you see that, Keff?" she asked. She froze the image, and was ten kilometers past it by the time he responded.
"Antiquities," he said, leaning forward against the straps over his chest. "Are they still using those?"
"My monitors say that's where the broadcasts were coming from."
"Whew!" Keff said.
Trimming slightly to follow the contour of the land, she dipped into a valley and up over the next, higher, mountain range. On the other side she found the first flat terrain. Even in the cultivated fields there were traces of the acid rainbow colors. She looked forward to finding out what those bright red grains were.
"Crops look healthy, but there's very little heavy cover," she said. The Cridi were wide-eyed. She manifested her frog image near Big Eyes.
"Enjoying yourself?" she asked.
"Yes!" the Cridi squeaked, grinning in the human fashion. Clutching Tall Eyebrow with one arm, she signed with the other hand. "A new landscape, the first! Videos of original landings and colonies do not compare to own eyes!"
In the other ship Carialle could see the entire crew glued to the 3-D tanks. She was glad they felt the way she and Keff did about exploration. The Cridi would be a wonderful addition to Central Worlds. When M-C finally allowed the documents to be signed, that was.
"Look, that's a spaceport," Keff said, picking out a distant feature on the horizon after they cleared the next mountain ridge. He peered at the spiky growths poking up from the flat plain on the terrain map. "That is a spaceport, isn't it? Yes! Look, you can fit right in! Just land there."
"I intended to," Carialle said, impatiently, as she was already dumping velocity. She extended visuals to extreme magnification, trying to discern the landing pads, and find herself an empty slot to set down.
"What a collection of derelicts!" she exclaimed in dismay. "I'm never going to pass for one of those. I refuse to try. I do have my pride."
Keff leaned up to peer at the screen and signalled for more magnification. Carialle flung up the image she was viewing. The tiny irregular shapes on the cabin screen suddenly took focus.
"Great stars, you're right," Keff exclaimed, looking as if he didn't know whether to laugh or not. "Those look like they've been cobbled together by committees of people who'd once heard a rumor of a story about a spaceship."
"I have no idea how one of those would fly," Carialle said, "but hit me with a hammer if I ever let their ground crew do maintenance on me."
The field reminded them of the scatter of ship remains on the airless asteroid at the edge of the Cridi system. The three craft that stood on the landing pads had been put together with no practical knowledge of the working details. Exhaust vents were ducted to the outside where they would cause the craft to spin in frictionless space. Fuel tanks were exposed, and in one case, the single hatch hung open to show a control room unprotected by anything so pedestrian as an airlock. And yet two of the ships showed clear signs of having launched and returned safely at least once.
"My internal scans show no shielding in half the bulkheads." Carialle said. "The crew must be suffering from fierce radiation poisoning. If they lived."
"These people are suicidal," Keff said flatly. "Or perhaps they're kamikaze pilots, who refuse to be captured alive."
Carialle was silent a long time while she studied the ships. "I think it's buck ignorance," she said at last. "All the pieces necessary are there, but the instructions for assembling them were in a non-native language, so they did the best that they could."
"Like the pedalcycle I had as a boy," Keff said. "No safety backups at all, but it ran."
"Yes, and that's curious, because the ships that were chasing us had full shields."
Someone must have passed the word that Carialle was on her way. By the time she had tipped up and was beginning her descent, the field and the sky above it was full of griffins. Some of them fluttered gracefully to the ground at a respectful distance, but Carialle counted over a hundred in the air alone, with more in sight in the distance. Their followers were catching them up.
"Are they armed, Cari?" Keff asked, surveying the scene with a wary eye.
"Not with anything that carries a heat signature," she said. "Good heavens, but they're big beasts."
"Those teeth!" Tall Eyebrow signed, a-goggle at the screen.
Carialle stepped down magnification to her more immediate location, and settled neatly toward the landing pad between the taller of the two jalopy spaceships. Measuring her thrust to the minim, Carialle brought her tail to the ground just as her engines shut off.
"Swank," Keff said, grinning. "You look like a candle on a minefield, lady love."
"I intend to outclass the competition right from the start," she said. "All psychological advantage we can gain will be to our benefit, if we ever get to a point where we can negotiate."
"I'm ready," Keff said. "Listen: 'Freihur, co nafri da an colaro, yaro.'" The IT unit on his chest recited in Standard, "Greetings, leader you me take go, please."
"That's fine, if that's what those words mean," Carialle said, skeptically. "Trying to guess from context, it still could mean, 'Greetings, your sister sells rugs in a zoo.'"
Keff didn't bother to defend the honor of his translation program.
"We'll find out," he said, pointing at the short-range screen. "Here come the authorities."
On the field, a white-sided gurney like a medieval siege tower, rolled toward Carialle. The half dozen griffins operating it moved in jerking haste, showing their excitement. An enclosed tunnel with soft bumpers extended and clamped against Carialle's side.
"Ah, so that was their design on the remote base," Carialle said. "I'm glad to see they don't steal everything."
"Easy, Cari. It's showtime," Keff said.
He stood up and sealed his suit, waiting for the faint hiss as each edge met. With the same care, he put on his helmet, then fastened his gloves. A secure seal. He breathed deeply of the slightly plasticky-tasting air, setting the air-recirculators going. There would be no more sudden breaths of ammonia. He felt excitement warring with nerves in his belly, and told both emotions to quiet down. Another life form, another world on which he would be the first human to step! What an opportunity! It was another notch in his belt, although, technically, Carialle had set foot on the planet first. He pretended to grimace, but he couldn't concentrate on being upset. What would happen to him when he stepped outside the airlock? He wasn't afraid to go, but by the stars, he was wary. On the external screen he could see the crowd of griffins gathered on the landing field. As he was checking his heads-up display, he felt something bump into the back of his legs. He jumped half a meter and spun around in midair.
"What are you doing?" he asked. In the few moments he had his back turned, the four Cridi had climbed into their travel globes, and they were clustered around his feet.
"We are coming with you," Tall Eyebrow signed, rolling back a foot or two so he could look up at Keff's face.
"Oh, no, you're not," Keff said, accompanying his words with firm gestures. "This could be dangerous. Please stay in here and cover me with your amulets. I'm counting on you."
"We would share your peril," Tall Eyebrow said earnestly.
"They tried to kill all of us on that base," Keff pointed out, signalling in exasperation. "Me, they just allowed one of their number to stalk. They went blind mad when they saw you."
"They know something of Cridi," Long Hand signed, "having killed three ships with Cridi defenses. It cannot have been easy."
"I do not know why they hate us, since we never did them harm," Big Eyes gestured, her wide mouth pressed into a thin line. "Never in our history have we seen these creatures. We should resent them, but we do not. We only wish to ask why. It is the honor of all Cridi." She added mischieviously, "Big Voice would have said so."
"Big Voice wouldn't be diving straight out into their midst! Give me a chance to get this on a friendly footing, then we'll ask them," Keff said, pleadingly. The Cridi conferred for a moment, exchanging signals with the screen on the wall on which Narrow Leg's face appeared.
"Very well," Tall Eyebrow said, turning back to Keff. "We wait."
"Thank you," Keff said formally, with a low bow. He strode into the airlock, and heard the door slide shut and felt the slight drag on his shoulders as Carialle pressurized the cabin around him. His suit inflated slightly around his knees, crotch, elbows, and chest. He braced himself, legs well apart.
"Now, how's that go?" he said out loud. "Hello. Please take me to your leader. 'Freihur, co nafri da an colaro, yaro.'"
"Relax, you've done it a dozen times," Carialle reassured him. "Hold on, they're scanning me." Keff frowned up at the ceiling.
"They are? I didn't think they had anything as sophisticated as scanners."
"I didn't say they were sophisticated scanners. It feels like elephants are walking on my hull," Carialle grumbled. She paused, and Keff heard a low hiss beyond the airlock hatch. "Just a moment—if the race we're about to face is hostile, why are they pumping a 90/10 nitrox mix into the airlock?"
"They're what?" Keff demanded.
"I swear it by my sainted motherboard," Carialle said. "Look for yourself." The monitor beside him lit up with a specroanalysis of comparative atmospheres. "You'll find the air fragrant, too. Plenty of plant esters."
"Perfume?" Keff felt his jaw drop, and yanked it closed again. "I have to speak to them. Open up." He hurried forward, helmet almost bumping the inner hatch. The door slid partway open, then halted.
Carialle's usually crisp voice was almost tentative. "Be careful, Sir Knight. I'd always rather you return with your shield, than on it."
"So would I, Lady Fair," he said, cheerfully, his voice echoing in his helmet. "But in this case I've got better armor than any dragon. Alert the Cridi to rev up their Core power, and let me go."
The airlock slid open onto a wide flexible tube filled with griffins as far as Keff could see. With one hand flat over his pounding heart, he bowed deeply to them. Two of the great beasts bustled forward, stopping about four paces away, and sat down on their haunches. The narrow clawed hands met under their squared chins in the same gesture of respect he'd seen in a thousand beamed conversations, then the great wings spread as far as they could in the confined space. Then, they waited.
Keff stepped forward, and copied their moves as nearly as he could. "'Freihur, co nafri da an colaro, yaro,'" he said.
"In good time, in good time," the lead griffin said, its upper lip splitting to show the gleaming white fangs beneath. "You are most welcome. Are you in need of refueling? Supplies?"
"Uh . . . no," Keff said, gawking at the being. "Welcome?" His hands were seized and shaken by all the griffins who could reach him. Wings, claws, and faces flashed by him in a blur. "Carialle, did they . . . did they . . . ?"
" . . . speak Standard?" Carialle finished his question. "They sure did. With a respectable accent, too. How in the black hole did they learn it? When? Who from?"
"I don't know! How . . . ?"
"We are so glad to see you, great human," the second griffin said, offering another namaste. "This is a great honor. Never before has one of yours landed in our place."
"Where do they usually land?" Keff asked automatically, struggling to make sense of the situation. "Humans! You know other humans! How? Why—when?" His mental drives were overloaded with the new influx of knowledge. "I never saw any communications with humans in your transmissions." But his greeters did not have a chance to answer. A host of smaller griffins pushed past or sailed over the full-sized beasts, and clustered around him.
"Greetings!" they said, in flutelike voices. "Where do you come from?" "What is this for?"
"This doesn't sound like all the humans they've encountered were captives," Carialle said, pitching her voice low to be heard. "It sounds perhaps as if they were . . . collaborators?"
"Don't jump to any conclusions, Cari."
"I won't, but it sounds pretty suspicious to me," she said.
Keff spoke over the head of the youngsters surrounding him to the adults beyond. "You know humans?"
The leader's lip split again. The expression was clearly the griffin version of a smile.
"Of course, sacred one. You are but testing me. I know of the Melange."
"Sacred ones?" Keff asked.
"The Melange?" Carialle asked, in Keff's ear. He waved a hand in front of the camera eye for silence so he could concentrate on what the lead griffin was saying. "Who? I have no entry for any such name in my database."
"What is Melange?" Keff asked. The leader gave him a puzzled glance that narrowed the center stripe in his large eyes.
"The Melange," the second one repeated, as if no explanation was really needed.
"But . . . ?"
"What are you called, human male-man?" one of the children demanded, tugging at his arm. When he looked down, it drew back, giggling at its own boldness.
"My name is Keff," he said, bending down to look into their faces. In spite of their size, and their weight, which must have been around fifty kilos each, they were like any children galaxy-wide: curious, friendly, bold and shy at the same time, and irresistibly cute. They romped around him on all fours.
"And what does 'Keff' describe?" asked another youngster, pushing in close. Its upper lip opened to show the nares, and it sniffed his hands and knees.
"Me," Keff said, tapping his chest. A couple of the children grabbed his hand with their wingclaws to examine his gauntlet. They exclaimed over the transparent material, running delicate talon-tips up and down his palm. "I, uh, Keff comes from Kefyn, an ancient name of my people."
"Poara, vno!" One of the youngsters had discovered the IT on Keff's chest, and pulled it down for a closer look.
"Uh, please don't touch that," Keff said, pulling his hands free and retaking prossession of IT from the enthusiastic fledglings.
"Vidoro, eha," another child said, and giggled, creeping around behind Keff to feel his clear plastic suit. Keff prided himself on his physical prowess, but these children were effortlessly stronger than he. They butted into his knees, patted his waist and chest. Their affectionate, curious touches had the power of a body blow.
"Kids, please, enough," he said, holding up his hands as he felt for a wall to brace himself against. The floor bobbed up and down under his feet, and he grabbed for the edge of the airlock. One of the children rose up on hind legs to get a good look at the tubes running from the back of his helmet into his suit, and Keff overbalanced completely. Flailing for a handhold, he toppled toward the adults. The first griffin grabbed his arms in both of its strong claw hands and set him upright.
"Forgive, sir-madam," the creature said. "My child is bad-mannered."
"It's sir," Keff said. "He—she?—didn't mean any harm."
"Are you all right?" Carialle's voice erupted in his ear. "Your heart is running the three-minute mile."
"I'm fine, Cari," Keff assured her in an undertone. The children, restrained from physical contact by their parents, were bombarding him with questions.
"Do you wish food, human sir? Good food, at the canteen. Human coo-orn, human broccocoli, human meeeat. All good!"
"Uh, maybe later," Keff said. "Tell me about these humans."
"But, sir, you are a human."
"They are rather charming," Carialle said, "and I don't want to like them. Not yet."
"I know what you mean," Keff said. "If they're involved in piracy, they must be the most cold-blooded . . ."
"What did you say?" One of the youngsters pricked up its fluffy ears. Keff cursed. These beings must have very sharp hearing. "Who are you talking to?"
"To my friend," Keff said, tapping the IT unit. At least they couldn't hear Carialle. "I am asking her questions."
"Who is your friend?" "Can we meet her?" "Your ship is so pretty. Can I go in?" "Ask us questions. We know answers!"
"Excuse me," Keff said, holding up a forefinger to stem the flood, and addressed himself to the first adult. "What is your name, please?"
"I am Cloudy. My friends here are Shower and Moment." The first Griffin indicated the two nearest him. Others began to call out their names, and Keff decided to count on IT remembering them all for him.
"What do you call this beautiful world, Cloudy?" he asked.
"This is Thelerie, at the Center of all things, but you must know that, human sir."
Keff made the namaste, and saw it repeated by every griffin.
"I must assure you I do not know all that. I am pleased to be here. Cloudy, I am here for a most important reason."
The wide smile flashed again. "Ah, so I know. What commodities do you bring to us?"
"Uh, no commodities. I'm just visiting."
Carialle's voice was a siren in his ear canal. "I knew it, piracy! They trade in contraband!"
"Hush, Carialle!" Keff schooled his expression and waited, smiling.
The griffins looked puzzled, and some of the ones further back exchanged glances. "You are not of the Melange?"
"No," Keff said, firmly. "Who are they?"
"You are teasing us," Shower said, shaking its great head.
"How do you know humans?" Keff said, pressing. "How do you all speak Standard so well?"
They looked knowingly at him.
"You are teasing us," Cloudy said, his upper lip spreading again. "We did not know of humans to be so merry."
"They are friendly?" asked Tall Eyebrow, rolling out of the open airlock around Keff's feet, with Small Spot and Big Eyes immediately behind. The griffins looked down at the small globes. Tall Eyebrow looked up at them, wearing his best human-type smile. The curious, striped eyes widened.
"Slllaaayiiim!" the aliens shrieked. The large ones grabbed the small ones, and they backpedaled hastily away in the billowing tube. In moments, the long corridor was empty, and bobbing softly. Keff, thrown off his feet by the jouncing, listened to the shrieks outside on the surface as he climbed up again, using the airlock for a handhold, but his gauntlets scrabbled on smooth enamel. As soon as the corridor had broken open to atmosphere, Carialle had slammed the airlock shut.
"Well, that hasn't changed," Carialle said, into the silence. "Your ancestors must have fought hard, TE."
"This isn't the way to start a detente," Keff said severely, looking down at the Ozranian. His back and elbows hurt where he'd slipped against the side of the ship. "I wish you'd waited inside as I asked you. Now they'll probably call out the militia."
"We will protect you," Big Eyes said firmly, showing her fingerstalls.
Keff swallowed his exasperation. "Please wait here. Please." He held up a hand to forbid any of the Cridi to follow him, and threshed clumsily down the tube toward daylight. Two of the globes levitated and started after him, but he held up a warning hand. The plastic balls subsided to the cloth floor. The Cridi inside them sat down crosslegged in the water at the bottom.
"We wait," Tall Eyebrow said, disappointedly.
Lying flat on his belly Keff poked his head out of the end of the corridor. The landing field was deserted. He squinted up into the bright sky, quickly enough to see hundreds of winged shadows fleeing off in all directions.
"Damn," he said.
"At least they aren't calling out the guards," Carialle said in his ear. "No transmissions from this site, and no warm bodies headed in your direction. My, that's a long way down."
Keff glanced at the ground below him. In their haste, the griffins had shoved the gurney away from the ship. The only way down to the pavement was a drop of almost ten meters.
"Do you want me to open my ramp?" Carialle asked.
"No." Keff pulled himself back into the tube and waded back toward the globe-frogs. "I guess you four win, after all. I need an elevator ride to the ground floor."
To his credit, Tall Eyebrow tried not to look triumphant.
"We come with you?"
"Yes, but under conditions," Keff said. "One, you do what I tell you. Two, you stay out of sight until I think it's all right. Three—well, I'll decide on three if I have to. Agreed?"
The Cridi all nodded vigorously.
"This visiting of a new world is fun," Big Eyes said, her dark eyes shining.
"It is," Keff agreed, as they floated out into the sunshine on a wave of Core power. "The worst thing is that we're not the first humans to land here, Cari. After all this, somebody else gets the credit."
"Cheer up, Sir Keff," Carialle said. "We're in this one for another purpose this time."
"I just wish all our witnesses hadn't run away," Keff said. He forced himself to stare straight ahead and not look down as the four Cridi carried him toward the mountain city where most of the natives had fled.