“That makes sense,” Becker said. “But somehow I cant help but thinking that they’re okay for now and it’s that snotty lady-dog of a leader of yours who is behind this.”
“You could be right,” Acorna said, “but we cannot risk it. If our people are to be safe, they must get those ships ready, and that will take time.”
RK, who had been sleeping with one eye open, idly flipping the end of his tail up and down, suddenly yawned and stretched. In a casual way his outstretched, kneading claw hooked Beck er’s arm.
“Ow!” he said. “Okay, the fourth member of the crew has voted. We’re changing course.”
Thariinye tracked the Codors erratic course from the data sent with the transmission. Maati watched him while he made his computations. Maati took to space travel like a kQaaki to water. Her favorite hiding places back home had been the technoartisan village and the spaceport, and with a child’s curiosity she had examined the interiors of all the ships, even the big evacuation vessels. She’d asked questions constantly, so many that she was afraid the workers would tell her to leave, or call Liriili and ask her if the government didn’t have something better to do with its messengers than have them bother people.
But actually she had made friends with most of the people she talked to. Aarliiyana, a motherly technoartisan, had explained all about the colorful designs on the hulls of the ships, how they were based on the banners of the most distinguished Linyaan clans and individuals. Aarliiyana had also told her that ne technoartisans had developed a new and more advanced eloaking technology for Linyaari spacecraft. The very craft Maati was now riding in, named after her dear friend Acorna’s grndmother, was the first craft to incorporate the new system.
Hidden among the brightly pigmented coatings used on the hulls were a field generator that could create the illusion of invisibility and a radiation absorption matrix, or RAM. The two would, between them, defeat sonar, radar, infrared, and all other traditional detection methods used to trace the location of a spacecraft. These systems could be turned on and off at will. In addition, the technoartisans had developed ways to deal with the engine exhaust, the ship’s communications, and so on so that the ship’s location could not be determined by any means. Even the ship’s locator beacon was routinely cloaked to both friends and foe, unless the ship’s captain made the decision to turn it on. That had to be done occasionally so that the craft could move through crowded shipping lanes without running the risk of being rammed by vessels that had no idea she was there.
It made Maati feel odd, knowing that nobody could find them out here in space, unless they chose to be found.
Being on shipboard when the vessel was in space as opposed to being inside it when it was docked at the technoartisan’s village was very different. For one thing, the air was drier, and it smelled peculiar, almost canned. Perhaps because of the drier air, she found her sense of smell was diminished, blunted in some -way. It gave her a curiously light feeling. And also, consequently, the grasses in the hydroponics gardenmany fewer varieties than grew dirtside-were not as tasty as they were at home. Well, the tastes were subtler, maybe. She figured she’d get used to the change soon enough.
With her sense of smell reduced, her sense of sight seemed to be more important, somehow. The inner, surfaces of the ship were made of brightly colored materials softer to the touch than metals, and the crew’s quarters were designed to look like small traveling pavilions. Sort of cozy, really. At first she missed the horizon, and the sweeping vistas of grass and town and distant hills she was used to at home, but when she went to the bridge and looked out the viewport into the stars, her homesickness of dead. How could those grassy fields compare with the beauty of deep space? She was lost in wonder. The galaxy gleamed like a jewel box before her. And she’d barely begun to taste the joys of space travel. How would it look at night on a planet with one moon? What about a planet with rings-how would that look from the ground? How thrilling to think she would soon be seeing for herself! Even with the looming threat of the Khieevi hovering in the back of her mind, she felt freed, somehow, for the first time in her life.