Logan caught Tani's gaze and she began laughing. "Honestly," she said to Laris through her giggles. "I don't think I've done so much standing around gaping in my life as I have since you joined us. But at least we aren't getting into any ruts." She saw Laris's sudden frown and understood the younger girl's insecurities. "No, honestly, I think it's a wonderful idea. So how do we set out on this quest?"
Laris, who had been waiting apprehensively for their reaction, grinned back, reassured. "I don't know. I thought I'd wait until Mr. Quade has a good lead and we could maybe check that out. Storm said Garands aren't expensive to run, and if my inheritance is enough, we could afford to go and see what we can discover. It shouldn't make too much difference to the ranch work. I don't work here full-time, and nor does Logan, although we do help out, and you have reliable hands for the Quade ranches anyway." She looked hopefully at Brad, who nodded back thoughtfully.
"I can help until you leave—if you do find a trail to follow. I'll be staying here; however, I see no reason why you shouldn't do as you want. As for your inheritance, since you're underage on Arzor it will be held in trust, under Patrol supervision. The credits are still trickling in as the captain's holdings are converted into cash."
"Versha wouldn't have any problems with such a trip?" Storm asked, mentioning their friend in the Patrol, who was commander for the Arzor sector.
"I shouldn't think so. She might even want to send an officer with you in case you do find this world and it's all that Harb suggested. As for Laris's inheritance, some of the end-figures will rely on offers by purchasers, but it isn't likely to be less than..." He named an amount which had Laris at least standing there goggle-eyed. To a child from the refugee camps, almost a million credits was so incredible a fortune as to leave her speechless.
"That isn't counting the ship, of course. It operated rather like a tramp ship, picking up cargo at one place and selling it elsewhere with very little of it ordered or owned by anyone but the captain and crew. At the time of the owner-captain's death the ship had a general and speculative cargo. I ordered the crew to bring that to Arzor. All the items will sell here well enough, and it will speed up the ship's arrival."
"What about the crew?" Laris asked anxiously, clearly envisioning twenty or more space-weathered men, all demanding to be kept on or paid off at great expense.
"A Bir-Garand doesn't take many to run it, and it's cheap, the side jets are steam operated from water tanks by each jet. The Trehannan Lady had only the captain and four crew. one of them is the navigator who's been with the ship for many years, although I understand the captain had those qualifications, too. The captain is gone, and I gather the remainder of the crew are all relatively new. He picked up men after the war when most of his original crew retired."
"Why did they retire?" Tani questioned.
"I'm told that they were all nearing retirement age when the war began and the ship was pressed into government ser vice. They stayed on for the captain and to fight the Xik. At least two were from Ishan. Once the war was over and the ship was officially returned to the captain and the Trehannan family, they could retire honorably, and they did, on war-pensions.
"After that the captain picked up replacement crew where he could. He didn't pay a lot, but Garands have more room and comfort than later ships, so he wasn't getting the dregs. Since his death, the navigator has stepped up to captain, but the other crew are all on one-haul contracts. You owe them only their pay for the trip to Arzor and the port has several ships lifting off soon after the Lady ports. I'm sure only four crew—if they have up-to-date specialist certificates and work references—can find berths on one of those. Or..." He hesitated. "If you like the look of any of them you could retain him or her for your own voyaging."
Storm eyed his step-father narrowly. "You had the Patrol put bond and checks on the ship, I presume?"
Brad nodded. "Yes. I didn't much like the look of a couple of the crew. The Patrol will be watching on all planets. The ship won't vanish to somewhere else so the crew can sell ship and cargo and pocket the credits. I was reminded that Harb's friend Gerry may have been involved with something like that and I made sure of this ship. It ports in another few weeks and Laris can look over her spaceship then."
He turned to look at the girl. "I'll talk to the Patrol officer here about freeing up some of your inheritance to run the Lady if you're still determined to take her out looking for Prauo's world. You'll need a captain and a navigator if you don't keep the original man on, but other than that you four can manage as cook, cargo manager, hydroponics gardener, and general workers. You don't have to keep on any of the crew already there; there are often spacers looking to hire on at the port. You can wait and choose from them."
"When could we leave?" Laris was shifting from foot to foot.
Storm held up his hands. "Whoa. A ship has to have bonded crew and supplies. This one has to arrive first and have a safety check. And before anything else, we should wait to find out where we're going and what we're looking for. No use running off into the blue and hoping. Let Brad chase up his contacts, wait until Kady has talked to Harb again. If there's anything from Lereyne about his friend, we'll see what we can put together. We'll save time in the long run by sitting here and looking at choices rather than haring off into space."
Tani watched the younger girl's face fall and put an arm about her shoulders, hugging her warmly. "We'll go, honestly. But it's as Storm says, we save time now by knowing which way we want to go; that's time we aren't wasting later. Don't worry, we'll go, but you have to wait for the ship to port at least." She hugged Laris again and giggled. "Unless you want to fly without one?"
Laris laughed reluctantly at the mental image that gave her. Of Laris herself flapping through space leading a string of space-suited figures—all of them, right down to the beast teams, flapping hard to keep up with her. Which also reminded her...
"Will you and Storm bring your teams? It'd be nice if they're okay with a spaceship?"
Storm shook his head at that. "Not Surra and Baku. But I could bring Ho and Hing." He'd named Hing's new mate after her old one, and both seemed happy with the choice. Laris looked at Tani.
"Mandy doesn't mind ships, and if we have an empty cargo hold she'll have some room to fly. Minou and Ferrare will just be happy to be with us, so my team can come. I don't think I'll bring Destiny though." Everyone flinched at the idea of the powerful, aggressive duocorn filly in a ship.
*I approve. It may be that if we find my world your teams will be useful as well as pleasant company.* Prauo's mind-voice made most of them jump. Since the big feline mind-spoke only when he had something to say, most of them had forgotten he was even there.
*Brother-in-fur,* Laris sent privately, *you share all I have. Are my plans to your own liking?*
*They seem to me to be good, though I agree with Storm: great haste may lose prey. Let us move with caution, first learning all we can.*
Laris looked up at her friends. "Prauo says Storm's right and we should move slowly. He's happy we will be going, though."
"Then," Brad said, "shall we get this load back to the ranch and start making arrangements? I have com-calls to make."
Half an hour later they reached the ranch, unloaded the dead frawn bull, and left one of Brad's people to put it in freezer storage. Storm shouldered the frawn skin that had been bundled together. A night in the tanner would turn that into a half-tanned skin, ready for the finishing touches from the experts that the Nitra were. Tani and Storm would leave the next day with the skin. It would be several days before they returned, longer if they had to seek out the Loris clan at a distance.
Next morning they were gone before Laris came out for breakfast. It might be the last opportunity Tani had to give Destiny a good workout before they left Arzor, and she planned to make the most of it. Both teams had gone with them. The Djimbut clan liked the beasts, which they referred to as "spirit animals," and as there was no hurry, everyone would be able to keep up without trouble. They had a single mare hauling the skin in a small four-wheeled work-cart, too, so any weary beast could ride at need.
Logan explained all this as Laris ate. Once he was done she commented, "You don't think they mind having to leave some of their team behind?"
"No, honestly, I don't. The ship would be overcrowded with Surra and her mate and Baku and her mate, too. And Storm was telling the truth—Surra and Baku hate spaceships. They'll be happier staying, and Storm will be happy if they are. The others won't take up much room, and Prauo was right, they may be useful if we find his world."
A week later Brad came looking for them, finding both down by the corrals with Prauo, admiring a new foal. "Kady found Harb three days ago," he greeted them. Laris whooped.
"What did he have to say?"
"Quite a lot after she'd convinced him he wasn't in trouble and fed him a little sober-up. Just enough to have him coherent while still feeling good. His friend Gerry turns out to be one Gerald Machlightner, cargo master on the Flame of Antares. And this you and Prauo will find interesting, Laris. Harb says that Gerald did die on Lereyne. His friend went crazy, talking about aliens getting into his head. And the date of Gerald's death is just after the time you found Prauo abandoned."
Laris and Prauo looked at each other, and the big feline mind-sent, *You believe then that it was Gerald who kidnapped me and that the world he spoke of was mine?*
"I think it's at least possible. Kady's continuing to work on Harb, and I have a request in to the Patrol for anything they can find out about Gerald, his career, his ship, crewmates, any trade routes the ship recorded, and any of the TF Combine records at all that they can turn up. They'll also be quietly checking up on Harb as far as they can. I'd like to know how he knew Gerald. That could give us a line on Prauo's world, too. In another few weeks we may have enough information to start plotting a course of action."
Brad was right in that hope. Over the next two weeks a surprising amount of miscellaneous information trickled in concerning Gerald, Harb, and the TF Combine. The first installment, arriving only six days after the initial information from Kady, explained her discovery of how Harb had known Gerald.
The house alarm sounded, Laris, Prauo and Logan came running, to find Brad at the comceiver. He lifted the plastic sheets one by one from the tray as they slipped into place and began to read aloud, skimming the most interesting items first.
"Well, well. It seems that Harb is really a man named Joseph Harber. He worked with Gerald when Gerald was a rookie spacer. Harb was injured in a port fight, took a minor pension and left the ship just before it officially vanished."
"They don't usually give pensions for nothing," Logan commented.
"He fought to stop the ship from being ransacked by low-porters after loot while the rest of the crew was absent." Brad paused at Tani's puzzled look. "Low-porters are the scum of the ports, criminals who hang about hoping to steal something from any ship left unguarded long enough. If they get the opportunity they may kill a spacer for his credit chip, all small stuff. But sometimes they can band together and attack a small spaceship if it looks vulnerable enough.
"Harb was alone on watch. In the old days that did happen sometimes in the wilder ports on smaller settlements. Harb held the ship until his mates could return, but the attackers had tossed him down the boarding ramp during the fight and his back was permanently damaged. That's still one of the things we can't always fix completely, but I'd say there was another reason he could have chosen to leave his job."
It was Laris who understood first. "You said he left just before the ship officially vanished. Maybe he'd been offered the choice: stay with the ship when it disappears, or leave, keep silent, and have a pension for saving the ship?"
"That's my guess," Brad agreed. "He must have left on good terms and they must have trusted him to keep his mouth shut. TF kept its word about the pension, too. It was set up immediately and in trust with the main bank of Lereyne. It's basic, but they gave him enough to see he never starves."
"They'd have known he kept his mouth shut," Logan added. "So when Gerald got back he could talk to Harb, knowing his friend was regarded as safe." He looked thoughtful. "I wonder just how often they did see each other and talk, between the time of the ship's going missing and Gerald's death? Harb might know a lot more about officially undiscovered worlds than anyone realizes."
Brad shook his head. "One or two worlds, maybe. But most of the worlds Terran Survey discovered in the old days were useless to Earth. They weren't Earth-types, and it could cost more to work them than they would have been worth. But this world with mice and melting ruins is a possibility, for both us and Prauo.
"I've talked to Versha. If we do find out enough for you to go hunting with some chance of finding it, she'll back you with the Patrol. She can't do a lot in credits, but she can release supplies for the Lady, give you official sanction and recognition, permit you to take a couple of limited blasters, let you have a Patrol med-cabinet and stasis berth for emergencies, and have a Patrol all-planets bulletin in place requesting you be given aid at need as official nonsworn short-contract employees."
Logan blinked. "That's impressive."
"Versha isn't a fool. None of that will cost her much. If you bring the ship back in one piece she gets the stasis berth and med-cabinet back again. She gets supplies for you in bulk and cheap, and acknowledging you costs nothing. On the other side of it, if you find an unoccupied Earth-type world we can colonize, she looks farsighted and her superiors in High Command will almost certainly promote her. If you find a new race on an Earth-type planet we can maybe trade or make treaties with, she looks just as farsighted, and the promotion is a reasonable possibility."
Logan nodded. "Sounds good to me. What other news was there?"
"Well, Gerald may have committed suicide. It's down as an accident on the files, but from the witness descriptions it was possibly either intentional or he was so frantic over his belief about aliens in his head that he simply tried to run through a cargo hovers lane without looking."
Laris winced. The cargo hovers tended to run in their own on-ground lanes at around four hundred miles per hour. Anyone hit by one would be thrown into several more transporters before they could stop, and the result would be unpleasant.
"What else?" Logan said.
"My friend on Trastor thinks he may have located some of the TF documents." Brad paused. The others eyed him, waiting to hear the rest of what he'd been told. "All right, he hasn't been able to go through them properly as yet, but one thing he can say: the records he's found continue for several years past the time TF supposedly dissolved the company. They also appear to have some minor records of supplies for the Antares past the time of her disappearance."
"Wow!" Logan said inadequately. "How come stuff like that was saved?"
Brad smiled. "Accidentally, of course. I'm sure they were originally intended for disposal, but TF had an accountant. He had a heart attack, dropped dead while alone, and was discovered too late for resuscitation. His family bundled up everything from his files and stored it in an officially bonded warehouse until the tax authorities could go though it.
"There was a suspicious fire which comprehensively destroyed the warehouse and TF probably assumed they'd got all of the records. They didn't. Their man had taken some of the documents home and tucked them away in a storage box in his attic. The family found the box only recently, looked inside it, found some old papers of no interest to them, and just left them where they were.
"When my friend started talking to them, they remembered the box and sold it to him for a few credits. I talked to Versha, and she's arranged for it to come in on the next Patrol ship. We'll have it in a few more weeks."
He studied Laris's hopeful look. "There are no guarantees, my dear. But there may be something in it that will help. You may be surprised what Storm and I can work out from supply lists."
Logan agreed. "There's a formula traders use, Laris. So much air, water, and food per person per day, week, or month. That can be checked against the ship's hydroponics area, the course it was taking, and what fuel it may have carried. Run it all through a computer, and if you have enough information you get a radius within which the ship could have traveled outward and returned to a human-settled world."
"What if they resupplied with one of the other races?"
"That could show on the manifest, if that's there. Or we may be able to pin down Harb to what worlds Gerald told him they visited and roughly when."
"But it's still a circle and they could have gone in any direction?"
"We'll see when the information arrives." Brad stopped the discussion firmly.
*That is so. Haste loses prey,* Prauo mind-sent to everyone.
Laris leaned down and tugged his ear gently. "How many prey have you lost through haste, great hunter?" she said aloud.
His mind-send in return was smug. *Very few. Enough said.*
Laris and the others laughed. Brad left, still smiling, while two humans and a large feline departed, the humans to do some of the never-ending work on a large ranch while Prauo hunted grass hens. In another five days Storm and Tani should be back, unless they were delayed. In a few weeks both Laris's ship and the information from Trastor should also arrive. Laris could barely force herself to do as Prauo suggested and wait.
Tani arrived back with Storm late on the evening of the fifth day after that conversation. She was beaming when she came into the house with Storm at her shoulder, and surveyed her family seated around the dinner table.
"We're home, we're starving, and we have a good result to report. Food first."
Brad was already dishing up plates of the hot stew the others were enjoying. He added hot buttered rolls, mugs of swankee, and a plate of savory pancakes. Storm and Tani settled down to eat until finally both pushed their plates away, picked up the refilled mugs, and Tani started the tale.
"I'll make it fairly brief. All the details tomorrow if anyone's interested. We reached my clan and Speaker-of-Dreams sent a message to the Loris clan. She described the arrowhead pattern and they identified it as belonging to a young hunter on his warrior quest who had been lost for some time before his body was found. Any signs they could have followed had all gone by then although they could tell from his injuries that he'd been killed by a frawn.
"Storm and I took the frawn skin to the Loris clan and presented it to his mother. We told her how we'd found the bull and killed it, and we gave her the arrowhead as a true token that her son had died as a warrior, having drawn blood from the beast that killed him. That meant the clan could give a proper warrior dance to farewell his spirit. Having the proof and being able to hold the dance restored status for his family and they were grateful."
Storm nodded confirmation to all this. "They were so grateful that they insisted on giving us gifts for all involved in the restoration of their kin's honor. Being present, Tani and I were able to refuse the gifts, saying that the honor of aiding such a prominent clan was sufficient."
Tani dug in the pocket of her shirt. "Since you weren't there and couldn't refuse, I have gifts for Laris, Prauo, and Logan. I told them how Laris's spirit friend had faced the bull to save Logan and that we might not have been able to kill the beast without his courage, and they were very impressed. Their gift to Prauo is the best. Look!" She gently shook items out of the wrapping onto the table, and everyone admired the revealed jewelry.
"This is for Prauo," Tani said, lifting the first item—a trade plaque beautifully carved and inset with a light-purple catseye gem. "I told them it was the color of Prauo's eyes and they insisted he must have it. This other one is for Laris." She displayed a smaller plaque inset with a smaller gem of the same color. Both had metal loops so they could be worn as pendants.
Logan reached across the table for the remaining item. It, too, was a trade plaque, but instead of being carved from the usual ivory-looking frawn bone, it was carved from Loris lizard bone stained a soft green. In the center glittered a catseye gemstone of a slightly darker green. Logan admired it briefly before leaving the table to return moments later carrying leather thongs and a light braided-leather collar.
He handed one thong to Laris. "Here, you can wear your plaque at once if you like." He dropped to one knee, looking Prauo in the eyes. "Do you want to wear your plaque on a collar or would you rather not?"
*It is kind, but I think I would rather not wear a collar, lest those who see me mistake me for property,* was Prauo's refusal. *Let my sister keep the gift for me. One day it may be useful.*
Laris nodded, taking the plaque. "I'll keep it safe."
Brad stood, pushing back from the table with a yawn as he led the way to the lounge, where everyone settled into armchairs or onto the long, comfortable sofa. "It's good you're back. With luck we'll have more news very soon. Versha let me know earlier today that the Patrol ship didn't have to make another stop after all, so they'll be here in three days."
Laris almost squeaked with excitement. "Only three days?"
Logan snorted sarcastically. "Only three days. I can see you're almost bored with the news—" A cushion shut his mouth with emphasis. He caught it on the bounce, tossed it back, fielded the second following from Tani and the cushion fight moved out past the table into the next room, leaving Storm with his stepfather. Brad looked after his son and daughter-in-law with affection, and after Laris with affection mixed with some doubt.
"She's very young still."
Storm's voice was slow as he considered that. "True, but a child of the refugee camps ages faster than her years. She is kind, sensible, has the beast-master gift, some wealth, and I think her love for my brother is no infatuation but something lasting. In any case, Asizi," he concluded, using the Navaho word which was a bond between them, "I think they will make up their own minds on the matter. It is better to do or say nothing; then you are free to aid at need."
Brad sighed quietly before changing the subject, but his gaze lingered upon the three. The girls were bombarding Logan with cushions while he caught and hurled them back. Cushions bounced, targets squealed happily, and Laris's face was unusually carefree, alight with uncomplicated joy as he had rarely seen it. Perhaps everything would work out well. A man couldn't live his children's lives for them. He could only hope.
He hid a sigh. There were several things he hadn't told the children. One thing in particular which had apparently never occurred to Laris or Prauo. The big cat was, as yet, only a baby and sexually immature. What could happen when Prauo matured worried Brad Quade. Some felines went into a form of rut during which they could be extremely dangerous. It would devastate Laris if her best friend and comrade were to be killed or even badly injured by someone who believed they were defending themselves.
Brad had been looking for some indication of Prauo's world for a lot longer than his family knew. He'd quietly discussed it with Versha and she had talked to Terran High Command. Had Laris's inheritance not been discovered, the Patrol had intended to use the information Brad and Tani's aunt Kady were uncovering to seek out Prauo's planet if possible and if they could detach a ship from its usually more pressing duties. But with Laris's ship available and the child's determination to use it, Brad hoped that he could find enough of a trail to give them a good chance at discovering the world they sought.