Dirge - Alan Dean Foster [62]
Twisting his inflexible upper body around as much as he was able, Reldmuurtinjak dipped his head forward until both antennae made contact with the human’s hand. It was a gesture of greeting and farewell that was becoming more common among mammalian and insectoid acquaintances, one that took into account humankind’s regrettable lack of a flexible cerebral sensing mechanism. Smiling, Lee turned and moved to rejoin his friends.
Reldmuurtinjak regarded him for a moment longer, then returned to his work. It was as monotonous, boring, and unrewarding as ever—but without pausing to consider the reasons, he found that he was feeling a little better about it.
10
As starships went, the battered, downsized craft that stumbled inelegantly out of space-plus in the vicinity of Argus VII was singularly unimpressive. The parabolic fan that promulgated its KK-type drive field was inefficiently aligned and indicative of low-grade manufacture. Further proof that the vessel was the product of a struggling as opposed to a surging technology could be found in the design and execution of the main body. Any ship of human, thranx, or AAnn fabrication was superior.
But it was no derelict. It moved, and it was guided by its builders, who took what pride they could in a vessel that represented the pinnacle of their own meager science. All ships might not be equal, nor their engineering, but the crew of the odd little craft took pride in their species and its limited yet very real accomplishments.
The Unop-Patha were not well known. They occupied a single system whose sun they called Unatha, after the Great Being they traditionally believed had given birth to the first of their kind. Ill equipped for long-range exploring, they kept close to home and sent out no more than a couple of ships at a time to maintain contact and relations with the far more vigorous sentients who occupied the same general area of the Arm. Humankind knew of them largely through the thranx, who had enjoyed contact with the species for well over a hundred years.
The Unop-Patha were neither bold nor threatening, finding the maintenance of even formal relations with other intelligent races a strain on their limited resources. An easy conquest for an aggressive, expansionist people like the AAnn, their world and its scanty assets were not even worthy of the force required to take it over. Their very worthlessness assured their continued independence.
Occasionally they sent one of their few space-plus-capable ships voyaging. Not in search of resources they were unable to exploit, or worlds they were incapable of settling, but because they were as curious as any developed people, albeit with a timorous curiosity. Treetrunk drew their attention not so much because of the tragedy that had befallen that human colony but because it lay within the limited range of the best of their vessels. They were aware of the catastrophe, of course. Every intelligence within that part of the Arm that had access to travel in space-plus or that had space-minus communications capabilities knew.
Their arrival was immediately noted and their presence challenged by one of the two warships from Earth that remained in orbit around the planet. It took a few moments for the analysts on board the cruiser Shaka to convince themselves of the identity of the visitors. Setting aside initial impressions, they did not take the abused, apparently innocuous appearance of the much smaller vessel at face value. Everything and anything in Treetrunk’s vicinity had to be thoroughly checked out.
As soon as ship-to-ship communications were established and the taxonomy of the Unop-Patha crew confirmed, the visitors were allowed to proceed