Her face radiant with pleasure, Cofort reached a slender finger through the bars to gently rub the captive’s head, an attention he received with every indication of contentment.
Suddenly, as if recollecting herself to her position and purpose, the woman stepped back, flushing hotly. “I’m sorry, Sir,” she apologized. “Mara had spoken of him, and all the newstape coverage . . .”
“An interesting beast,” Jellico agreed gruffly. “You appear to get along with animals,” he added in classic understatement as he eyed the still humming hoobat.
“Aye, with nearly all subhuman-level biotics of reasonable intelligence. I like them, you see. They seem to realize that and respond to it. Plants grow well for me, too. I managed the hydro on the Roving Star and her predecessor for as long as I can remember.”
“That may prove to our advantage at some point.”
Jellico took her ID from her but did not insert it into the reader. “Your period of service will be from the present until the Queen is ready to leave Canuche of Halio, with the option to negotiate another run or a more permanent contract should either course seem desirable to both of us.”
Rael nodded. “Agreed.” She smiled. “The gem market?”
“Mr. Van Rycke would like to test your skills there, aye.”
“I’ll be glad to put them to the Queen’s service, though a certain amount of luck is always a strong component when buying jewels.”
“We recognize that fact as well, Doctor.”
The man looked thoughtfully at the disk in his hand, then glanced back up at her. “Sit down for a moment, Doctor Cofort.”
He remained silent until she had complied, then went on. “I’ve been in contact with your brother.”
“A reference check was a logical move on your part, especially after I admitted to breaching my contract with the Mermaid.” She said no more, although his silence invited further comment.
It was the Captain who continued. “Cofort reports that you’re as good a general hand as is to be found in the starlanes and that your medical qualifications are impressive.”
“However?” she prompted, readily picking up the expected reservation in his tone. Teague would not have lied for her.
“Cofort tells me that you don’t respond well to the sight of suffering or major injustice.”
The woman’s eyes brightened momentarily. “Neither does he.” She was grave again in the next instant. “It is true that I’ve drawn him into a couple of confrontations he would as soon have avoided.”
“I can’t afford to have the same thing happen to me or my crew,” Jellico told her bluntly. “A Free Trader Captain, the Captain of any starship, is responsible not only for his vessel and cargo but for every living thing she carries. He can’t always act as he would if he were an unencumbered individual. There’re always going to be times when he has no option but to look the other way. That’s true of your brother and even more so of us; we don’t pack the same payload.”
“I am aware of that fact, Captain Jellico. Too aware of it. I had to satisfy myself with leaving the Mermaid and saving my own skin instead of properly challenging Slate’s negligence.”
Her eyes dropped, and she bit down on her lip. “I hope someone does.” She looked up again, her hatred open and strong. “Soon.”
“You can count on that if the crew’s got as much reason to be dissatisfied as you said.” He slid the ID into his recorder and pushed the button, officially sealing his new hand to the ship. That done, he returned it to her. “Welcome aboard, Doctor. Thorson should be waiting outside now to show you around. You’ll have just enough time to see something of the Queen and stow your gear before we lift off.”
4
Dane glanced at his timer. What was keeping the woman in there anyway? His own initial interview had taken only the few seconds necessary to process his ID. . .
He glared at the door, angry with her and with himself because he recognized that his present ill will stemmed from his own uncertainty.
Damn, he thought. He knew as well as the next that mixed crews were supposedly better on every count, but the Queen had managed just fine with only men since he had joined her company, and he was not anxious to see anything intrude that might cause trouble now. They faced enough of that from the outside without introducing it into their own company.
It was no question of Rael Cofort’s probable skill or lack of it that was bothering him. Certainly, it was not her gender. There had been an abnormally low percentage of women in his class at the Pool, but they had still comprised more than a third of the total. To a one, they had proven equal to the work and had pulled their part both individually and in the group projects assigned to them.
He sighed to himself. The newcomer’s capabilities hardly interested him at the moment. He was simply afraid of what she might do. He liked the Solar Queen the way she was. He was settled, comfortable, and he did not relish the thought of any changes this potentially disruptive recruit might bring about.
Recruit! Cofort had not even been invited to join the crew. She had bludgeoned her way in with that blasted charter.
Memory rose to Thorson’s mind, and his irritation ebbed. He had not been with the Queen so long that he could not remember his fears and feelings during his own first days aboard. This woman might be older and fully accredited in her specialty, but he did not believe she would be entirely immune to at least some of the same emotions that had made his initiation such a misery for him. He would be a proper bastard if he added to her trials with a show of causeless hostility.
No, he told himself decisively, in all fairness and all humanity she would have to be given her chance, maybe several of them, but let her prove a source of trouble, let her even begin to try to destroy what they had here . . .
The panel slid open, and Rael Cofort stepped into the corridor. She gave him a quick smile. “All set,” she told him. “I’m now an official—”
A shriek as loud and teeth-jarring as a civilian attack alert silenced her. Even out here they could hear Jellico slamming the bottom of the cage, setting it bouncing violently, but for once this usually sovereign remedy had no effect. The siren wail continued undiminished.
Thorson winced. “I wonder how much of that the old man can take. Or Queex, for that matter. It’s a wonder that jostling doesn’t scramble his brains.”
The woman laughed. “Hardly! He loves it.”
“He’d have to be even odder than he looks to enjoy taking a beating.”
She looked at him strangely. “You haven’t read up on hoobats?”
“I’m afraid not. I’ve been too busy studying the finer points of cargo management,” he responded, manfully keeping out of his voice the defensive note threatening to sharpen it. Alt used to make him feel like this, sometimes still did, with his superior air. He wondered if that was a characteristic of all extraordinarily fine-looking people who were also uncommonly intelligent. “You have, I suppose?”
His companion failed to notice his discomfort. “Mara’s description intrigued me, so I did a little research. They’re rather fascinating little things. I can well understand why the Captain would want to adopt one, given his interest in X-Tee wildlife.”
“That’s more than the rest of us can say,” he remarked, his curiosity aroused almost despite himself. “How about sharing your findings?”
She laughed. “Sure thing. — Hoobats come from Tabor and are quite rare even there, filling a very specific niche. They live only in certain canyons that are little less than wind tunnels and spend their entire lives clinging to stone projections or ledges or to wildly swaying branches, waiting for something falling within the appropriate size range to come within striking or luring distance. They don’t have to eat often, and they hunt, of course, the way Queex did when he rounded up those poisonous pests for you.
“The young are nurtured in free-hanging nests depending on slender branches to safeguard them from predators. Both parents feed them during their short period of dependency, but otherwise, hoobats are completely solitary creatures. That’s why Queex can exist happily in isolation from his kind the way he does. As for the jarring, that’s actually soothing, a flashback to his old life and to his time in the nest. In fact, a hoobat appears to require a certain amount of sharp movement to remain healthy.”
Dane grinned. The image of Captain Jellico tenderly rocking an overage hoobat infant to rest was one worth cherishing in the heart if not to be openly shared—at least not in the skipper’s hearing.