Ferok made a contrast to him. The land Starkadian, Tigery, Toborko, or whatever you wanted to call him, was built not unlike a short man with disproportionately long legs. His hands were four-fingered, his feet large and clawed, he flaunted a stubby tail. The head was less anthropoid, round, with flat face tapering to a narrow chin. The eyes were big, slanted, scarlet in the iris, beneath his fronded tendrils. The nose, what there was of it, had a single slit nostril. The mouth was wide and carnivore-toothed. The ears were likewise big, outer edges elaborated till they almost resembled bat wings. Sleek fur covered his skin, black-striped orange that shaded into white at the throat.
He wore only a beaded pouch, kept from flapping by thigh straps, and a curved sword scabbarded across his back. By profession he was the boatswain, a high rank for a male on a Kursovikian ship; as such, he was no doubt among Dragoika’s lovers. By nature he was impetuous, quarrelsome, and dog-loyal to his allegiances. Flandry liked him.
Ferok lifted a telescope and swept it around an arc. That was a native invention. Kursoviki was the center of the planet’s most advanced land culture. “No sign of anything yet,” he said. “Do you think yon Outsider flyboat may attack us?”
“I doubt that,” Flandry said. “Most likely it was simply on hand because of having brought some Merseian advisors, and shot at me because I might be carrying instruments which would give me a clue as to what’s going on down below. It’s probably returned to Kimraig by now.” He hesitated before continuing: “The Merseians, like us, seldom take a direct role in any action, and then nearly always just as individual officers, not representatives of their people. Neither of us wishes to provoke a response in kind.”
“Afraid?” Lips curled back from fangs.
“On your account,” Flandry said, somewhat honestly. “You have no dream of what our weapons can do to a world.”
“World … hunh, the thought’s hard to seize. Well, let the Sisterhood try. I’m happy to be a plain male.”
Flandry turned and looked across the deck. The Archer was a big ship by Starkadian measure, perhaps five hundred tons, broad in the beam, high in the stern, a carven post at the prow as emblem of her tutelary spirit. A deckhouse stood amidships, holding galley, smithy, carpenter shop, and armory. Everything was gaudily painted. Three masts carried yellow square sails aloft, fore-and-aft beneath; at the moment she was tacking on the latter and a genoa. The crew were about their duties on deck and in the rigging. They numbered thirty male hands and half a dozen female officers. The ship had been carrying timber and spices from Ujanka port down the Chain archipelago.
“What armament have we?” he asked.
“Our Terran deck gun,” Ferok told him. “Five of your rifles. We were offered more, but Dragoika said they’d be no use till we had more people skilled with them. Otherwise, swords, pikes, crossbows, knives, belaying pins, teeth, and nails.” He gestured at the mesh which passed from side to side of the hull, under the keel. “If that twitches much, could mean a Siravo trying to put a hole in our bottom. Then we dive after him. You’d be best for that, with your gear.”
Flandry winced. His helmet was adjustable for underwater; on Starkad, thé concentration of dissolved oxygen was almost as high as in Terra’s air. But he didn’t fancy a scrap with a being evolved for such an environment.
“Why are you here, yourself?” Ferok asked conversationally. “Pleasure or plunder?”
“Neither. I was sent.” Flandry didn’t add that the Navy reckoned it might as well use Starkad to give certain promising young officers some experience. “Promising” made him sound too immature. At once he realized he’d actually sounded unaggressive and prevaricated in haste: “Of course, with the chance of getting into a fight, I would have asked to go anyway.”
“They tell me your females obey males. True?”
“Well, sometimes.” The second mate passed by and Flandry’s gaze followed her. She had curves, a tawny mane rippling down her back, breasts standing fuller and firmer than any girl could have managed without technological assistance, and a nearly humanoid nose. Her clothing consisted of some gold bracelets. But her differences from the Terran went deeper than looks. She didn’t lactate; those nipples fed blood directly to her infants. And hers was the more imaginative, more cerebral sex, not subordinated in any culture, dominant in the islands around Kursoviki. He wondered if that might trace back to something as simple as the female body holding more blood and more capacity to regenerate it.