But there are always problems. Saint Rihndell bitched about the twelfth and fifteenth sets. Blueshell argued at length, grudgingly produced replacement pieces from his bag of spares. Pham couldn't tell if the Skroderider was debating for the fun of it, or if he really was short on good replacements.
Twenty-five sets okayed.
"Where is Greenstalk going?" said Ravna.
"What?" Pham called up the view from Greenstalk's cameras. She was five meters from Blueshell and moving away. He panned wildly about. A local Skroderider was on her left and another floated inverted above her. Its fronds touched hers in apparently amiable conversation. "Greenstalk!" There was no reply.
"Blueshell! What's happening?" But that Rider was in gesticulating argument with the tusk-legs. Still another set of trellises had failed their examination. "Blueshell!" After a moment the Rider's voice came over their private channel. He sounded drifty, the way he often did when he was jammed or overloaded. "Not to bother me now, Sir Pham. I'm down to three perfect replacements. I must persuade these fellows to settle for what they already have."
Ravna broke in, "But what about Greenstalk? What's happening to her?" The cameras had lost sight of each other. Greenstalk and her companions emerged from a dense crowd and floated across the middle of the concourse. They were using gas jets instead of wheels. Someone was in a hurry.
The seriousness of events finally got through to Blueshell. The view from his skrode turned wildly as he rolled back and forth around Saint Rihndell's people. There was the rattle of Rider talk and then his voice came back on the inside channel, plaintive and confused. "She's gone. She's gone. I must… I have to…" Abruptly he rolled back to the tusk legs and resumed the argument that had just been interrupted. After a couple of seconds his voice came back on the inside channel. "What should I do, Sir Pham? I have a sale here still incomplete, yet my Greenstalk has wandered off."
Or been kidnapped. "Get us the sale, Blueshell. Greenstalk will be okay… OOB: Plan B." He grabbed a headset and pushed off from the console.
Ravna rose with him. "Where are you going?"
He grinned. "Out. I thought Saint Rihndell might lose his halo when the crunch came — and I made plans." She followed him as he glided toward the floor hatch. "Look. I want you to stay on deck. I can only carry so much snoop equipment; I'll need your coordination."
"But — "
He went through the hatch head first, missing the rest of her objection. She didn't follow, but a second later her voice was back, in his headset. Some of the tremor was gone from her voice; the old Ravna was there, fighting out from under her other problems. "Okay, I'll back you… but what can we do?"
Pham pulled himself hand over hand down the passageway, accelerating to a speed that would have left a lubber caroming off the walls. Ahead loomed the uncompromising wall of the cargo lock. He swatted a hand gently at the wall and flipped head over heels. He dragged his hands precisely against the wall flanges, slowing just enough so the impact with the hatch did not break his ankles. Inside the lock, the ship had his suit already power up.
"Pham, you can't go out." Evidently she was watching through the lock's cameras. "They'll know we're a human expedition."
His head and shoulders were already in the suit's top shell. He felt the bottom pushing up around him, the seals fastening. "Not necessarily." And by now it probably doesn't matter. "There are plenty of two-arm/two-leg critters around, and I've glued some camouflage to this outfit." He cupped his chin in the helmet controls and reset the displays. The armored pressure suit was a very primitive thing compared to the field suits of Relay. Yet the Qeng Ho would have given a starship for this gear. He'd originally put the thing together to impress the Tines, but it's going to get some early testing.
He chinned up the outside view, what Ravna was seeing: his figure was unrelieved black, more than two meters tall. The hands were backed with carapace-claws and every edge of his figure was razor sharp and spined. These most recent additions should break the lines of the strictly human form, and hopefully be intimidating as hell.
Pham cycled the lock and pushed off, into the wormheads' terrane. Walls of mud stood all around, misty in humid air and swarms of insects.
Ravna's voice was in his ear. "I've got a low-level query, probably automatic: 'Why you send third negotiator?'"
"Ignore it."
"Pham, be careful. These Middle Beyond cultures, the old ones, they keep nasty things in reserve. Otherwise they wouldn't still be around."
