prissi

  It was just 2000 when he awoke from a dream that had ended in a particurly nasty crash with a smoking crater.

  Cmmy with cold sweat, he made himself some instant soup and tea and slowly rexed. He needed something to take his mind off the simutor. He looked again at the lo the cargo hatch. It was certainly beyond his abilities to hack it, so the only option was to bypass it meically.

  "Bckbeard, how are the tract workers beied?"

  "12% oxygen, 5% carbon dioxide, lethal to unmodified humans."

  "Bckbeard, do we have a SCAB for su enviro?"

  "Yes, three, as the atmosphere on the p is not suitable for unmodified humaher. Locker II, drawer 4b."

  He opehe drawer. There were ihree emergency breathers, each good for half a day acc to their bels. The drawers below tained a small colle of tools. There owerdriver that might work on the hinges. And it did. Soon they were all loose, except for ohat held the whole hatch to its frame.

  "Bckbeard, cut the engines for the 0500." Immediately he floated.

  He put on the mask and moments ter the st screw was out. He wedged the tip of the powerdriver uhe hiil he heard the telltale hiss of pressure equalisation. Slowly, he pulled the screw out of the frame by moving the whole hatch to the left. Very slowly and very carefully, because it weighed five times as much as he did. He secured it with a rope, just in case.

  The hibernation of the sves was not just the atmosphere, it was cold in the hold, the exhaust from the breather trailing clouds.

  "Bckbeard, cargo hold lights on."

  There were not many lights. They illuminated a skeletal steel rack that filled the entire hold. There were three rows of eleven partments, separated only by thin steel supports. In each was a hibernating sve, 33 in all, strapped to their matrasses. They looked human, as far as he could tell with the helmet each wore. He was shivering, not just from the low temperatures; he had never been responsible for so many lives on a ship before. He floated around the rack to the other side. Itht er was a small dispy showing the status of all the sves.

  From this side it was clear that these were not human sves, not fully human: they had the upper body of a human, but their lower body was that of an animal, with thick fur and a tail. He wished for his pad to identify their shape and in. Anyway, his curiosity was satisfied. Then he saw a tail flig and heard a faint groaning in the lowest box he tre. Should he check it out? An arm sounded on the dispy of the rad a light turned yellow: one of the sves had woken up. Probably from the higher oxygen levels ing from his part of the ship.

  He hurried around the rack. The sve was a female. Her eyes were open and she was trying to move. But the 4D restraints held her down.

  "Wait!" He sailed over to her, removed the helmet and unbuckled her harness with the clearly marked yellow and bck striped release lever. She lifted her torso and banged her head on the rack above, cursing in some unknown sng.

  "e quickly!" He held out his hand. She took it and he pulled her out of her partment. She was long, much lohan he had expected. He grabbed her hio stop her before she hit the wall at the far end of the crew's small living area. She robably still in shock, because he would have paoo if a stranger in a mask had floated him out into an unknown enviro at 0 g.

  As soon as she was outside, he floated the heavy hatch bato its frame before any more sves woke up. After tightening the first two screws, the lower pressure in the hold sucked it into pce. He turned and removed his mask.

  The sve ignored him, preoccupied with weakly pung her lower body, g and whimpering as she tumbled through the crew partment.

  "Hello."

  She looked at him, her eyes wide. Fear had clearly taken over as she tried to walk on air with her four uncoordinated legs. Taking up half the volume of the small crew space, one of her legs hit the edge of the table a her flying. She smmed her shoulder into a wall and screamed again, at her body and at him in a very strange, almost inprehensible Standard.

  He was out of his wits, so he quickly climbed into the cockpit. "Bckbeard," he shouted, "make a patch for a person three times my weight, half a day."

  "It could kill a person." Still, the dispenser clicked.

  He took the patd timed his jump from the hatch to fly past her neck when her back was to him. The patch hit its mark on the side of her neck before she even realised he was back.

  He khe almost instantaneous effect of the 4D patches, but it was still strao see how quickly she slipped into unsciousness. Her wild, erratients slowed, her wailing reduced to a whimper and her breathing became shallower and slower. The st thing to twitch was her tail.

  He pulled her gently to the floor. "Bckbeard, decelerate again with 0.13g, please."

  The up and down came back. He made sure her limbs were straight and not tangled. But with 0.13 g there was little risk of bruising or cutting the bloodstream anyway.

  To calm himself, he made some tea and soup. The patch seemed to be w normally, she was unscious with a low pulse and shallow breathing.

  He returo the cockpit. But instead of another simutor run, he ran their fuel simution again, and it looked even worse tha time. The curreimate was that they would ehe atmosphere at 54 km/s, more than fifteen times the p's escape velocity. He did not he simutor to know that they would burn up ihin atmosphere.

  "Bckbeard, why are the numbers off?"

  "The star's gravity and the p's orbital parameters seem to be wrong iabase."

  That could not be true, or no one would be able to jump to this system.

  "Bckbeard, I want you to run a diagnosti all gravity sensors."

  "That will take 8047."

  Of course, everything would be fihe AI had somehow miscalcuted their trajectory. Despite the fact that the brown dwarf's gravity was so weak that they could even jump into the p's orbit. This gave him an idea.

  "Bckbeard, I want you to jump behind the p's orbit, but close to it. Look at this course here. Then we make several catch-up jumps, each with a flyby. We have to jump below or above the ecliptic to avoid the energy-harvesting satellites. About 80 repetitions to bleed off 80 km/s delta v. you do that?"

  "No problem. Want a patch?"

  "Bckbeard, no. the coils take it?"

  "Mips are not a big problem, these are more like single pulses at these short distances."

  "Bckbeard, jump when ready."

  The 0010 jump arm souhe room colpsed a little too early and immediately unfolded into an endless blue wall. A wall in 3D that disappeared again in an instant. It took him a moment t. "Bckbeard, that was one of the sor arrays of Energy Harvesting Satellite 1. Are y to kill us? I said behind the p, not in front of it."

  "Sorry, the one will be on target."

  The still ringing jump warning was back to zero, and the room folded and unfolded in the blink of ahe p filled their view and quickly shrank again, as it should. And their delta v had dropped by 1.2 km/s. "Bckbeard, that was good. Please repeat it."

  * * *

  In the 0070 they made another 53 jumps. The st jump was far off again, the AI had kept them in 4D almost 4 micros too long. Only by luck did they miss the downward maser beam of the Energy Harvesting Satellite 3 by less than 10 km. Any stupid timer could do better than this AI. He was sure by now that the AI was running illegal mods, mining crypto, or whatever it was that ed processing power and screwed up its timing. He had heard simir rumours before. But for now, they had lowered their delta v enough. "Bckbeard, jump to here, 0.87 out at 35 degrees behind the p. We'll slow down the rest ventionally, using the engines. Jump when ready."

  Almost anywhere in the general viity would have been fine. But they came ht on target. Now they could slow down to the p's escape velocity and still have some fuel left for emergencies.

  He sighed and unbuckled the 4D harness. Their deceleration was still at optimal efficy with only 0.13 g. Too little gravity to move properly. So he climbed dowairs like an asthmatiail.

  The first thing he did was check the cargo turned guest: She was still knocked out by the patch, but her breathing was steady. Ohing to worry about.

  And even though the whole flyby had sted less than 1000, it still felt like half a day. The 4D had not been that bad. Looking at bad geometry with increasing brightness and noise for a few moments was ok. But the nerve-wrag errors the AI might make at every jump had left him in a cold sweat.

  So his check was the shower. The small reservoir had one adva was already fully recycled. He enjoyed a few moments of lukewarm mist. It did wonders for the mind. And now he ged into fresh clothes because his guest was there. Hard tet wheook up half the crew's living space.

  He breot of tea and took it to the cockpit. When it was empty, he asked for a weaker patch. From the cockpit hatch, he looked at her again. It still seemed strange, a woman with an animal for a lower body, fur all over, fs ending in bck caps. And very strong, human and animal parts alike. He took a deep breath and, more fidently now, slid down the dder in slow motion, stoppio her. Even lying down, her lower body was almost as high as his groiouched the fur on her lower body. It was very thid warm. Feeling guilty, he quickly withdrew his hand. Another deep breath and he removed the pster from the sve's ned repced it with the much weaker oheepped back as far as the small crew quarters would allow.

  It took a few moments for the drugs to wear off. Finally, she blinked.

  "Hello, I am Marik," he said, intoning each word carefully.

  She looked up at him from the floor with a rather vat expression, then straightened her torso. Now her head was level with his stomach. And she was really strong, her shoulders much broader than his. In fact, everything except her head was about 1.5 times bigger. She had long, muscur arms and huge hands. With slow movements, she stood up on all fs, boung a little in the low gravity. Because of the patch, her face showed only slight fusion. Standing, she was more than a head taller.

  "I hml Lalleli", she mumbled. "whell is Hellni? Hwhy his no heavy?"

  "Hello Lalleli. I gave you a patch to calm you down. I will remove it now." He slowly crossed the two steps between them, palms up, then reached around her o pull the patch off.

  She grabbed him as he got closer, he barely mao pull the patch off before she held him with inhuman force. "hhelni, hwo is hwo?" she asked, unintelligible with her heavy at and slurred speech from the drugs, holding him tight. Slowly, her breathing accelerated.

  "Are you feelier?"

  "I had a dream," she said, now finally in some Standard, heavy with dialect. "I was being mutited."

  "You are on a spaceship. But you look healthy. As far as I tell, I don't know your species."

  "What? I am human."

  He didn't know what to say. Human was a broad category, of course. But he doubted any society would sider her human enough.

  She turned her head and looked behind her. And then she hugged him, almost crushing him. Tears fell on his head, his trapped between her breasts. Her breath ruffled his hair, even her breathing was s. Her g shook his whole body, she held him so tight he could barely breathe. He hoped she would calm down soon. Until he almost fainted from ck of oxygen. "Please let go a little," he huffed.

  Just then she realised she was almost crushing him and released him abruptly.

  He was afraid she would go into shock again. "Please, I have no idea what happened. I just found you in the cargo hold. I am Marik, the pilot of this spaceship. What is your name?"

  "Spaceship?" She spoke it without an at, almost as if it were a fn word to her. "I am on a spaceship?"

  "Yes, you are. That is why everything is so light. Please tell me what you expected?"

  But she was silent for a long time. "I, I am not sure," she said at st. "I had to undress a into their pod. I think it was on a spaceship too. But we were on the ground, near Cleventrough."

  "Where is Cleventrough?"

  "Oh, that's the name of the spaceport."

  "Sorry, I mean, what star system is Cleventrough in?"

  "Star system? Oh, I don't know." She started tain.

  "Sorry, I think I find out which system it is. The name sounds special enough. And if all else fails, we visit all possible systems. Please, I want to help you. Are you all right?" It was a stupid question, of course.

  She pointed behind her. "And what is that?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "I ehe pod on two legs. A woman, not this!"

  "Oh!" He leaned against the wall despite the low gravity.

  "You mean you were human?"

  "Until I woke up here," she looked miserable again and began to cry, "and now I am this strange, hideous beast! Ouch!" She had spped her lower body again.

  "I do not think you are hideous. Your fur is very soft."

  She looked at him like he was crazy.

  "I'm sorry."

  "You like the fur?"

  "Have you felt it yourself?"

  She hesitantly stroked the fur on her front legs. "Hmm."

  "May I too?"

  She nodded. He ran his hand through her back fur. Fallerian had no furry animals, only spiky hairs on giant caterpilrs and a few others. And those hairs were most often dangerous. Her fur was different, soft and warm. He could even feel her breathing.

  " you move ys?"

  She lifted her left hind leg. "Yes. Somehow, I knew how to use them. Even if it feels wrong. I still feel human."

  "You are human. Just in a different form."

  Her long arms caught him easily. An, gehis time. "Thank you."

  "You know there are 32 more like you still hibernating in the cargo bay. To be sold as sves, apparently."

  She cursed something unknown to him.

  "Sorry, I didn't uand."

  "Never mind. I sold myself as a tract worker for five years to support my parents. The pany even promised me a new plot of nd after that. But I never agreed to it." Her tears flowed again. "Shrumptic, I'd rather work the streets."

  So they were indeed tract workers. Uaited her back. "I see. You have been turned against your will. But what are we to do now? I think you will get your piece of nd on the p."