Once the ship had done so, Acorna released her restraint and RK’s.
“Conditions are hospitable, Captain,” the Buck Rogers voice of the ship’s computer told him. “That blue stuff that looks like sand, is. The other blue stuff that looks like the water is. Salt water, though, so take your desalination and purification unit.
The temperature is sixty degrees Fahrenheit with moderate winds at three point two knots. The air is breathable, even fragrant, by human standards.”
“Are there-life forms?” Aari asked.
“Other than here? How should I know? I’m a ship’s computer, for heaven’s sake, not an anthropologist. My heat and motion sensors are picking up something, but it could just be all that wreckage out in the water.”
The scanners showed what Buck was referring to more precisely. Becker salivated at the sight of all that salvage.
Aari was more sober. “Does it show if there are any live beings there?”
Becker shook his head. “Don’t know. My scanners are for salvage, mostly.”
“I hope Thariinye and Maati were able to make it to the escape pod,” Acorna said with a little shiver that made her skin twitch. “I don’t think anything else would have survived that crash.”
Becker said, “Look at the ship. I don’t see any obvious signs of them or the pod in the wreckage. They’re here somewhere. And if that’s the case, Princess, we’ll find them. What I’m hoping is that none of those stupid bug things made it to a pod.”
“Their ships don’t have pods, Joh,” Aari said. “Their carapace protects them against many things that would kill others.”
“What about that large shuttle-shaped piece of debris over there, captain?” Mac asked.
Rrrrrowwsst!” RK responded. Cat says it’s Khieevi,” Becker told them.
“We heard him, Joh,” Aari said soberly. ‘Well, from here I’d say it’s not as badly wrecked as the Khieevi ship.” He indicated the fragments of the ship floating ^ the water. “We can at least hope that any occupants are in ^e same fragmentary state as their transportation,” Becker said.
RK bolted for his personal exit and they heard his claws scrabbling as he slid down the cat chute to the ramp that led to the robolift.
“We better get moving,” Becker said. “Cat seems to have to go real bad. Must be that pretty blue sandbox out there just itching to have a Makahomian cat scratch in it. Aari, you get that Khieevi earthmoving weapon you brought along as your dowry. I’ve got the locator and laser rifle,” he said, hefting a sleek and deadly looking weapon the length of his forearm.
“And I have my own array of attachments, Captain,” Mac said, opening his forearm to display the corkscrew, can opener, knife blades, scissors, magnifying glass and other small equipment that were standard with his particular model.
Acorna made a side trip of her own. Taking a slight detour to an otherwise empty storeroom, she gathered up a lightweight titanium cargo net she had spotted earlier in the journey.
“Good idea, Princess,” Becker said when he saw it. “We’ll be able to net us some salvage from that Khieevi ship for sure.”
Thus armed, they boarded the robolift and headed down. Acorna felt something sticky on her shoes. She took a closer look at her shoes, then at the source of the problem. “Mac, when we get back here, I want you to scrub the lift down. It’s a mess from the plant sap on that planet where we picked up the piiyl.”
MacKenZ looked surprised-probably because she was talking about minor housekeeping matters now, when so many more important things were at stake-but didn’t say anything. Clearly the robot had never learned the trick of keeping fear at bay by concentrating on the trivia of life. Maybe robots didn’t ever feel that kind of fear.
Once the robolift set down, however, Becker regarded the outside of his ship with disgust, too. “Those damn plants slimed my hull! Look at that! What a mess.”
“Joh,” Aari said softly, nodding to redirect the captain’s attention to the halves of the Linyaari ship. “What if Maati and Thariinye are in the wreckage?”
“If they’re there, they’ll be easy to find. We’ll know soon enough what the situation is. No sense borrowing trouble. Princess, anything to add here?”