Startide Rising Read Online Free PDF Page A

“That-t is kind of you, Doctor Metz. You do me a favor.”
    Metz patted the lieutenant on his rough flank, as if to reassure him. Takkata-Jim bore the patronizing gesture with outward calm, and watched as the human turned to swim away.
    The bridge was a fluid-filled sphere which bulged slightly from the bow of the cylindrical ship. The main ports of the command center looked out into a murky scene of ocean ridges, sediment, and drifting sea creatures.
     
    The crew’s web-lined work stations were illuminated by small spotlights. Most of the chamber lay in quiet shadows, as the elite bridge personnel carried out their tasks quickly and almost silently. The only sounds, other than the swish and fizz of recycling oxywater, were the intermittent click of sonar pulses and terse, professional comments from one operator to another.
    Give Creideiki his due, Takkata-Jim told himself. He has crafted a finely tuned machine in this bridge crew.
    Of course, dolphins were less consistent than humans. You couldn’t tell in advance what might cause a neo-fin to start unraveling until you saw him perform under stress. This bridge crew performed as well as any he had ever seen, but would it be enough?
    If they had overlooked a single radiation or psi leak, the ETs would be down on them quicker than orcas upon harbor seals.
    The fins out there in the prospecting team were safer than their comrades aboard ship, Takkata-Jim thought somewhat bitterly. Metz was a fool to worry about them. They were probably having a wonderful time!
    Takkata-Jim tried to recall swimming free in an ocean, without a harness, and breathing natural air. He tried to recall diving in deep water, the deep water of the Stenos, where the big-mouthed, smart-aleck, shore-hugging Tursiops were rare as dugongs.
    “Akki,” he called to the E. L. E radio operator, the young dolphin midshipman from Calafia. “Have you received confirmation from Hikahi? Did she get the recall?”
    The colonial was a small Tursiops variant of yellowish-gray coloration. Akki replied with some hesitation. He still wasn’t used to breathing and speaking in oxywater. It required a very odd dialect of Underwater Anglic.
    “I’m … sh-sorry, Vice-Captain, but there’s no reply. I checked for a monopulse on all … ch-channels. There’s been nothing.”
    Takkata-Jim tossed his head in irritation. Hikahi might have decided that even a monopulse reply would be too much risk. Still, confirmation would have taken from his back an unpleasant decision.
    “Mm-m-m, sir?” Akki tipped his head down and lowered his tail in respect.
    “Yess?”
    “Ah … shouldn’t we repeat the message? There’s a chance they were distracted and missed it the firsh … first time…”
    Like all dolphins from the colony planet Calafia, Akki was proud of his cultured Anglic. It apparently bothered him to have trouble with such simple sentences.
    That suited the vice-captain fine. If there was one Anglic word that translated perfectly into Trinary, it was “smartass.” Takkata-Jim didn’t care for smartass midshipmen.
    “No, comm-operator. We have our orders. If the captain wants to try again when he gets here, he’s welcome. Meantime, attend your possst.”
    “Heth … er, aye aye, shir.” The young dolphin spun about to return to his station, where he could breathe from an airdome instead of gulping water like a fish. There he could speak like a normal person while he awaited word from his closest friend, the human middie out in the wide, alien ocean.
     
    Takkata-Jim wished the captain would come soon. The control room felt closed and dead. Breathing the fizzing, gas-charged oxywater always left him tired at the end of his shift. It never seemed to provide enough oxygen. His supplementary gill-lungs itched with the irritation of defied instinct, and the pills—the ones that forced extra oxygen into his system through his intestines—always gave him heartburn.
    Once again he caught sight of Ignacio Metz.