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They moved carefully, because the floor was unsteady beneath their feet and hardly had the hum of lowered pressure stopped when other noises began in the ship's vitals. Shaun found himself reaching out for a firm handhold as the vessel bounded forward in increasing spurts of power from its engines.
"What have you got here? Rocket power?" Merl exclaimed.
"In a way, yes," Vesh answered. "And a speed-happy pilot."
She pushed open a hatch to a higher deck and stuck her head up.
"Take it easy, Skem!" she shouted. "What's the rush? Let our guests get acclimated first."
Then, "There's nothing for it. I'll have to take over," she told them, and reaching down she grabbed hold of Worf and pushed and hauled him through the opening to the deck above. She scrambled up after him. The 3 young men, exchanging doubtful glances, followed her up the ladder.
Shaun emerged within the bubble to which he'd recently clung on the outside. He looked about and was struck by the panorama of sea in all directions. Already the island with the spaceport was dwindling to a mere shadow on the horizon. He felt a stab of alarm as he realized the irrevocable nature of their actions. There could be no turning back now. No fast return to the port if they didn't like what they'd get into. And after all, what did he really know about Vesh? What did any of them know? She might be the bait to lure them into a trap. This fellow, Skem, who seemed set on taking them away at a breakneck speed....?
He wrenched his eyes from the vast expanse of water surrounding them and focused on the interior of the cabin. The control room, he immediately deduced, for at the farther side was a seat surrounded by instruments and Vesh was already bending over the occupant and actually shaking him!
"All right, Skem!" she cried. "I'll take over now! You heard me!"
She knocked his hands from the controls and the frantic speed of the ship began to slacken. With an apparently practiced heave of her hips she rolled Skem out of the pilot's seat and heaved herself into his place.
"All right!" she said again, when seemed to be under control and Skem had picked himself up from the floor. "Quit trying to impress the spacers. You know perfectly well a flota can't go as fast as a spaceship. Get up and be introduced to our guests. This is my brother, Skem, gentlemen. He's not as crazy as he acts. And this is Shaun---and Jan-op----and Merl. Have I got your names right? And that's Worf, their dog."
"Dog?!" cried Skem. "A real dog from Earth?"
Shaun had been puzzling over the fact that Vesh, who recently had held all their lives in his hands, was only half his size. But when he heard that high pitched shout of "A dog!" he suddenly understood. Skem was a kid. A little boy. How old? He couldn't estimate. Size, age, and growth varied from planet to planet.
"Not a Terran dog," Merl explained. "He's Shaun's dog. From Sobillon."
"Sobillon! That's the high-gravity planet, isn't it? What does that do to him----to you, Shaun?"
The boy was adept at names and information. Shaun was trying to formulate an answer, but Vesh spoke for him.
"You can ask him those questions after we're settled. Now go and rustle up some grub. And quit acting like a brat."
"Oh, heck!" Skem hesitated at the hatch. "What do I get Worf to eat? He must be hungry, too."
"Worf's not that particular," Shaun told him. "He prefers meat, but I guess it's got to be fish on this planet. He'll eat bread and fruit if he must."
"Get him some fish cakes. Fix a nice tray for all of us," his sister ordered. And then as the boy still hesitated at the hatch, she relaxed her autocratic manner. "Yes, you can pet him, I'm sure. He's friendly, isn't he, Shaun?"
"Sure, he's friendly. But all this is strange for him. Come here, Worf." And Shaun held his pet while Skem ran his hands over the dog's coat.
"Gee, how soft and fluffy he is! Imagine that, Sis! A pet that's not wet!"
Then, with a fast turn, he vanished down the hatch, his feet barely touching the rungs of the short ladder.
Vesh made a face at his departure. "You'll forgive his behavior, won't you?" she smiled at the three spacers. "He's really a fan of yours. Anything from outer space fascinates him. He's never been offworld, but you'll find that knows a lot about it. Every colony in the Cluster, and most of the uncolonized planets."
"Smart kid," Merl commented. "How old is he?"
"Sometimes he's too smart for his own good. He's 11, but don't let him know I told you that."
Vesh had slowed the headlong process of the flota so that now it was lazing along, ploughing slowly through the quiet ocean with a barely perceptible rocking motion as it responded to the gentle swells. Shaun looked back the way they'd come and saw the lower body of the vessel, torpedo-shaped, rising and falling in the spray like some giant fish. Far beyond their wake the bit of land they'd left lay like a cloud on the horizon. It seemed impossible that they'd come this far so fast.
The girl followed his glance and smiled. "She's got nice lines, hasn't she? Almost as fast under water as above water. We don't use rocket power, but something almost like it---air jets. She rides on a cushion of air. That's topside, of course."
Vesh locked the controls and motioned them all to sit down. At her touch, the proper number of folding seats sprang up out of the floor and clicked into place against the lower portion of the dome.
"We may be a little cramped," she said, "but we try to be comfortable."
"Almost like a spaceship," Merl commented, as he examined the furnishings and instrumentation.
"A lot of spaceship designing went into our flotas," she told him, "but we've added some improvements, too. Not that I know anything about spaceships. But almost everybody here's got one of these ships. Bigger or smaller. Some are very elaborate, but we like the simple life."
"The simple life!" cried Jan-o. "For an eleven-year-old kid! Do all kids run about in things like this on your planet? Doesn't your mom worry?"
Vesh smiled as she bent over to scratch Worf's ruff. "I think I told you that Skem's a bit extraordinary. Everybody grows up in the water, of course. You start with simple boats and machines and work your way up. Skem seemed to work up as fast as I did, even though he's----uh---some years younger. And we don't have a mom to worry, unfortunately."
"Oh. Sorry," Merl apologized for Jan-o's frankness, but the girl was unmoved.
"Our dad's a big wheel in municipal engineering and he got us the flota so we'd keep out of his way. It never occurs to him to worry. He just says I'm responsible."
Jan-o let out a low whistle. "Wow! I'd sure hate to be responsible for that kid on land! Suppose he ran into something going at such speeds?"
"There's really not much he ran into," she replied. "He was going away from the only land mass in this hemisphere. And we're off the regular traffic lanes. You can see there's not another ship in sight." She swept her arm around to cover the unbroken view to all points of the compass.
"Well, I guess it's a fairly foolproof place at that," Merl admitted.
"Oh, Skem's no fool. He's gotten us to trouble at times, I will admit. But he's awfully smart about getting us out. Now I wonder what's taking him so long with the food. Skem!"
Vesh's voice rose in volume, and almost immediately Skem's head appeared in the hatch opening, and he struggled up into the dome, carrying a kind of box-tray loaded with interesting dishes and bottles.
"Skem, you were eavesdropping!" his sister scolded. "Can't you grow up and act civilized?"
"No, I wasn't. I've been working as fast as I can. Remember, there's three extra people to feed. Four, counting the dog."
The young men were all on their feet. "You should've let us help. Just show us next time. Here, let me give you a hand."
Even Worf tried to be of assistance. He squeezed into the crowd around the food carrier and poked a sniffling nose among the dishes. But Skem was not inclined to relinquish his work of dispensing refreshment. As each helping hand was extended, he shoved a plate and cup into it.
"Here's yours----and yours----and that's for Sis. I brought Worf some yonk meat and a slimpoth bone."
The boy set a dish down before the dog and stood back to watch his reaction. Jan-o and Merl were both trying to serve Vesh at once. And Shaun relaxed in his seat and took a more careful look at Skem.
He saw a tanned, wiry youngster with a shock of red hair, blue eyes, and a mouth like an ocean cavern. He wore only the briefest of trunks and his arms and legs seemed to be all skin and bone. Right now he was focusing his attention on Worf and his food problem.
"Go on, eat it," he urged. "It's not gonna kill you. It's what all the animals eat on this planet."
Worf, having sniffed at the food suspiciously, apparently decided it was fit for gods, and began to gulp it down.
"There, you see?" Vesh said. "He can learn to like our food. Now come and eat your own, Skem."
The boy picked up his plate and cup and kicked up a wall seat, but he kept his interested gaze on the dog.
"Animals?!" asked Merl. "You've got animals of different kinds in this ocean?"
"We have a great variety of life in our seas," she said. "But maybe it's wrong to call them animals. That sounds as if we mean land animals such as you know. And this planet never had enough land to evolve more than small, primitive animals. In the sea we've got great, monstrous things. But you'd probably call them fish."
"But we do have animals!" Skem interrupted. "We brought 'em here."
"Yes, the early colonists brought some with them from Earth. They decided that they just couldn't do without a steak now and then or a glass of milk. And we've done a lot of land-building. My dad's still working on it. While most of it's been used for cities, a certain amount was put aside for the luxury of cattle."
"But if you've got herds, why not dogs?" Shaun demanded.
"Because the first colonists were hard and practical. Nothing was brought for a sentimental reason, like a pet. And you don't need herding here. The islands are so small and it's all scientifically worked out. So much space for cattle, so much for growing fodder. In fact, we've developed a native seaweed that's suitable for feeding cows. Of course, that whole operation's a great luxury and only for the rich. Skem and I were brought up on native food and that's what we prefer."
"And we have our own pets, Sis! You forgot about Coari."
"I'm getting to that. One of the founding fathers hit upon the idea of a sea animal to take the place of the dog. He decided that on a water world, man's best friend could be a seal. Quite a few seals and sea lions were imported. They've done very well over the centuries. In fact, some of them escaped and went back to the wild, so now we have several strains, those we developed by breeding and those that have adapted to our seas."
Skem could hardly wait for his sister to finish her little diatribe.
"Would you like to see Coari? What d'you think Worf will think of Coari?"
"You mean to tell us you've got a seal aboard?" asked Merl.
"What's it like? I've never seen one," Jan-o added.
"She's not aboard now. At least, I don't think so. But I can get her!" Vesh stuffed the final bit of food into his mouth and started down the ladder to the lower deck.
"She doesn't like to stay out of the water for long," Vesh explained. "But she follows us and comes aboard to sleep. We're very fond of her."
They all followed Vesh to the ship's lower deck and Shaun noticed that Vesh slipped the switch for a rise in air pressure and that his ears were soon recording the fact. But he quickly forgot about it when he saw Skem slide open the hatch through which the swimmers had entered and push a button that ran a bell.
"It rings both inside and out," Vesh explained. "Coari can hear it quite a distance away."
"She must be a fast seal if she can keep up with the speed you were making," Jan-o commented.
"But we've been practically standing still all the while I was getting the food and we were eating. She never lets us get far ahead."
"Besides, what do you know about how fast a seal can swim?" said Merl.
Shaun kept his eyes on the little circle of water where the ocean sloshed about but, shockingly, didn't come into the ship. He barely knew what to expect, and jumped in shock when a brown head, decorated with a mass of whiskers, shot up in the middle of the hole and two beady eyes looked around at the group.
"Hi, Coari! Come see what we've got here!" Vesh bent over and reached a welcoming hand and the young men gathered around, peering curiously at the sea creature.
Worf, on the other hand, backed away, barking nervously. This only served to focus the seal's attention on him. Right away, she shot farther out of the water, balancing herself on her flippers at the hole's edge. Her long neck stretched out in Worf's direction and her whisker's twitched. She gave several coughing seal barks.
"Hey, let the animals get acquainted!" said Merl, motioning them away from the open hatch. "Quit crowding. Give 'em a chance!"
"That's right," said Vesh. "If we want them to like one another, we've got to let them do it on their own terms."
They all drew back, and Worf, as if knowing what we expected of him, advanced cautiously towards the water hole. The hackles rose on his furry neck and he stretched it as far as possible, taking in the odd smell without getting any closer than necessary.
The seal rose still higher on its flippers, bringing its nose within 1 inch of the dog's. Each animal sniffed tentatively and when Worf put out a long pink tongue and licked the other's face: This was the signal for the end of negotiations. With a heave and a splash, the whole seal shot out of the water and rolled on the deck, almost knocking Worf off his feet. Then began a wild chase, maybe more accurately, a wallow, in which dog and seal rolled, jumped and ran around the wet and slippery deck, until Coari felt that she had had enough and, with one well-timed leap, disappeared into the water from which she'd recently emerged. Worf was left sniffing and barking at the hole.
The human population, which had retreated to the limits of the small space, now returned to the arena.
"Close the hatch, Skem!" cried Vesh. "Hurry up before she gets us all drenched!"
"Aw, who cares! She was having fun!"
"Well, enough's enough. Maybe our guests don't all want to get soaked right after supper." Vesh reached out and threw the switch which caused the hatch cover to close. "Come on. We've got to figure out where everyone's going to sleep."
She led them back to the upper deck and along a narrow corridor with doors on the other side. These proved to open into tiny cabins. The first two belonged to Vesh and Skem. But the girl assigned the third, with a double-decker bunk, to Merl and Jan-o. The last one was a storeroom, and with the boys' assistance, she moved most of the gear to the end of the corridor and rigged up a hammock in the space thus cleared.
"I hope you won't mind this," she smiled at Shaun. "There's room for Worf underneath. Now where's that boy got to? He should've been helping me to set things up."
"I don't think he came up from below," Merl said.
"Oho, I suppose he's let Coari back in. It'd be a calamity if that seal didn't spend the night in the splash room."
"You mean she sleeps aboard?" asked Jan-o.
"Oh, sure. If she wants to. Would you shut your dog out of your house?"
They all looked at Shaun, and he shook his head. "No. Definitely not. Worf always sleeps with me."
"Just don't let him know that she's down there. I've had enough water flying around for one night. Now if you want to step into the control room, I'll show you how we secure the ship for the night."
Two hours later, tired and happy, they made their way back to their quarters. Vesh peeked into Skem's cabin and they all heard his quiet breathing.
"He's had an exciting day." She sniffed. "I guess we all have. See you in the morning."
Her door clicked shut. Shaun saw his two companions vanish into their cabin, and called Worf to follow him into his. When he had patted the dog and seen him curl up in the little deck space, he climbed into his hammock, determined to make the best of sailor's bedding.
The next moment he let out a yell. The hammock swung crazily, and he catapulted onto the floor. In the dark he reached for the door, which was only an arm's length away. The corridor light glowed dimly as he pushed it open and he and Worf spilled out onto the deck. Around him he saw heads popping out of doorways. All except Skem's.
"What in the world happened? You having a nightmare?" demanded his friends.
"What's wrong?" cried Vesh. "What's the matter?"
"Something bit me. In there. In the hammock." Shaun held up his foot, hopping ludicrously on the other.
Vesh touched a switch, the lights came up brighter and they all saw the angry red blotches on Shaun's leg and ankle. The girl strode purposefully into the cabin and pulled the hammock open. She reached in and held up a dark, squirming mass.
"That boy!" she cried. "That bratty devil! He planted a surslug in your bed. It won't kill you, but its sting can be pretty uncomfortable. You'd better come into my cabin and let me fix it for you."
Reluctantly, he followed her to her cabin, while Worf sniffed worriedly at the door and his two friends paced the corridor outside. Skem, it seemed, was sleeping the sleep of the innocent.
But even after Vesh had swabbed, painted, and powdered his burning skin, Shaun couldn't sleep for a long time. His leg went on itching and his mind retained the impression of the repulsive creature which had momentarily shared the hammock with him.
"Just wait until morning, my boy!" he thought. "You just wait!"
But while his active mind was planning what he would do to that miscreant, his deeper instincts told him he would do no such thing. For after all, Skem was Vesh's brother. And Vesh was something beyond all experience in his young life.
ns 18.68.41.175da2
