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was planning to go on regardless but I did want to see what the scientists thought."
"It seems a shame to just write off the Altairians after all their troubles," Jamie said but then realized
he was indulging in wistful thinking. So far they had not met a surviving Altairian and now it didn't look as
if they would. Also, he was intrigued with Masters' reasoning. Had the Altairians really come to grief in
the same fashion as earth?"
"I don't see that we have a choice," Hawkins said.
"Not really," Masters agreed. " Jamie?"
"I guess so, Captain. Where next?"
"I'll get together with Westly and some of the others later today. We'll map out a run at the nearer G
type stars and just see what we find. In the meantime there's this other matter of Della Worley."
Jamie felt immediately guilty, then on quick reflection, absolved himself. He couldn't see that he
would have acted any different in other circumstances. Unless a person proved otherwise, as Della had,
he was always willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. He still believed the woman must have been
under some unbearable pressure to have acted as she had, especially in light of Fuzzy Britches' remarks.
He was surprised when Masters spoke up.
"Captain, I know you can't let her go free after what she did, but I think we have to look not at her,
but what pressures induced her to try what she did. She doesn't strike me as a fanatic."
"Me either," Jamie added quickly.
"What you both are saying, then, is that she had ulterior motives."
"Exactly, " Masters said. "Look to her superiors. That's where we can expect trouble if we do have
any more."
"Here, or back home?"
"Back home. I think we should be very careful when we return, especially if we don't bring back
anything worthwhile." "I ll bear that in mind. One more thing. Jamie, your pet cat. What did he mean
when he spoke out at the meeting?" "I'm not sure, yet, Captain. You have to realize, that for all their
intelligence, our pets don't really think like we do. I trust him, though. He is utterly loyal--and he has more
of a sense of how humans think than we do of how enhanced animals do."
"After the way he took care of Worley, I'm sure of that. Well, let's let that be for now. She didn't
have a chance to try to recruit any of the other spacers on board, and, so far, none of them have given
me any reason to suspect them. I'm willing to leave it at that, for the time being but I'll be awfully damn
careful when we return."
***
"Troy, I don't know what he meant," Jamie said in response to Masters' questioning as they walked
back toward their quarters. He intended to ask Fuzzy Britches when opportunity presented, but he
wasn't at all certain the cat would be in the mood until he had had a chance to forget the laughter which
had greeted his unexpected remark.
"Just asking," the ranger said. "I trust our pets a hell of a lot more than I do a lot of people."
"Me, too," Jamie agreed. "Look. I'll talk to him after a while, once he s gotten over being laughed
at. Cats hate that." He stopped at the entrance to his compartment. "Do you want to come in for awhile?"
"Later. I need to think about a few things. If we're going to be exploring other planets. I want to
rearrange our priorities. I don t think I want to have all the rangers out of the ship at one time again."
"I ll go along with that!" Jamie said.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The holographic projection being displayed against the opposite wall from the huge bed was entirely
Jeannie's work, although the motif originated with Jamie. He always liked to watch the intermingling of
pets with humans, and especially liked the way Jeannie's imagination in programming displayed the
reactions. A large bobcat, speckled with darker dots against an orange background crept into view.
Intelligent, amber colored eyes watched interestedly while a nude woman reached from where she was
submerged to the waist in a moss-banked pool to tickle her kittens under the chin. Their heads were
large in comparison to their small bodies, and as young as they were, they had trouble supporting them,
just as human babies did. The woman pulled herself half out of the water as he watched, displaying a
body that made him think of peaches and cream. He watched idly as the bobcat crept closer, wondering
how it would play out this time, the story repeating itself in infinite variety. The program was designed to
sooth as much as entertain.
He stroked Fuzzy Britches' back as the program played, watching the multi- colored fur spring
back from his trailing hand as if it were made of softly coiled springs, smiling to himself at how the cat
watched avidly as the bobcat crept further from the brush, nearer to the unsuspecting woman. Thoughts
turned lazily in his mind, trying to form a pattern, while he discovered what other space travelers had
before him: a passenger on a space ship really doesn't have much to do. Fuzzy Britches' remark that the
pets would take care of humans had gotten him to thinking of earth, and the implications for it of this trip.
Suppose they found nothing to help with the pet plague out here in the galaxy. What then? Some of the
Enclaves on earth might survive almost indefinitely, Houston being one of them, but only if some sort of
climax ecology finally settled over the pet-plagued land. And even so, that was no real long-term solution.
A static civilization would inevitably decay and finally fall. That had been proven over and over again,
throughout history.
Moon City and the Space habitats were in even worse shape. Given another few decades of heavy
trade with earth and they might become a viable, expanding culture, but trade with earth was shrinking,
not growing. There was no alternative for them; they must go in another direction, whatever the cost. The
Altairian technology gave them small hope, controlled as it was by earth. They had lost that fight. Or had
they? Della Worley had attempted to take the ship, and there might be other plots still not revealed.
Another thought occurred to him. Suppose they did find another world, compatible with life and
suitable for colonization--what then? Most of the space people still would be left wanting. Only those
trained from childhood could live in a gravity field of a planet. Surely the whole adult population was not
planning on sacrificing themselves so that their children could live. But perhaps they were. Jamie liked to
think well of people, given the chance. Perhaps that was what had been in Della's mind: steal the ship for
the benefit of their descendents. If it had, she had certainly been premature in her actions. A new
inhabitable planet had yet to be found. Their first two stops after Altair had found planets circling the stars [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]