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trying to use."
She drew the information feedline out of her glove and pressed it over the
inductor surface. The screen beside it clicked to life and began flowing with
a spaghetti-complex web of symbols.
"Oh, my oh my," Simeon muttered.
"Problems, Sim?"
THE CITY WHO FOUGHT
109
"Nothing oT Simeon can't handle," he said. "But the code is old. I don't have
anything that esoteric on file.
Nothing I can't eventually decipher."
"Don't let your modesty run away with you," she muttered, looking down at her
wrist chrono. Plenty of time, she thought ITwpe?
"I'm just cracking the interface and downloading it to decode at leisure,"
Simeon replied. "Don't get your tits in a tizzy."
"What did you say?", "Old slang," he replied blandly.
"Another antiquarian reflex, no doubt," she said archly.
"Touched Okay, got it," he said, "Get out of there."
"Gawd-dawm this thing!" Patsy said in frustration.
The tug was presenting its broad rear surface to the ancient colony ship.
Channa scanned carefully on
visual and deep-magnetic, looking for a place to engage their grapple.
"Time is a factor here, Ms. Hap." Gus's voice was a little testy. Aligning an
extra tug in the pattern had taken more time than anticipated.
"I just got up here, Mr. Gusky. I'm looking for a flat spot among these
struts. I can see why you gave it a pass. It's a mess. Wait, I think I see
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something now, it's..." She looked again and increased the magnifica-
tion. "Bloody helir she cried.
"Crap!" Simeon's voice overrode hers. It took the others a few moments longer.
"I don't believe it," Channa whispered.
"What?" Patsy demanded. "What do you see?"
"It's a shell. There's a shellperson out there, strapped to the hull."
"Are you sure?" Gus voice cut in. "Look, everyone else is in place, we have to
get this thing away from the stationN"
Simeon ordered in a roar that nearly fractured
110
Anne McCaffrey fc? SM. Stilling eardrums. "BELAY THAT, GUSKY!" A moment of
stunned silence followed. "Check it out, Channa. Now!"
"Aye, aye, sir," Channa said even as she strobed a landing spot where Patsy
could set the tug down. "Yes, Mr. Gusky, it's a shellperson all .right.
Granted, it doesn't look like anything you're likely to have seen, but brawns
learn to recognize em.a)L"
She hoped Simeon never had occasion to bellow like that again, with the
decibels going off the gauge.
Understandable, of course, or at least to her. If brains had a collective
nightmare, it was being cut off from their equipment and left helpless.
Attached to their leads and machinery, a shellperson was the next thing to
immortal, a high-tech demigod in this world. Cut off from it, they were
cripples. Spam-in-a-can, as the obscene joke had it. Neither Simeon nor she
were capable of abandoning a shellperson, even if its occupant should prove
dead.
"Gus, why don't you set the haul in motion," Channa said, knowing her
priorities had just shifted. "Patsy and
I will get this shellperson off."
She anchored the grapple just above the shell and as quickly as possible,
reeled the tug to it. She studied the
shell in the monitor as she drew closer. "It's inward feeing, they did that
right at least."
"Fardlingr^fo?" Simeon cursed. "Did it right? There is nothing right about
this. What kind of shit-for-brains did this? That shellperson was lodged on
the exterior of the huU\ Anything could have happened to him or her!
Bastards, bastards, bastards. Get him out of there!"
Channa heard the cold passion in Simeon's voice and recognized another aspect
of him, one his often diffident manner and sometimes boyish enthusiasms had
masked. Shellpeople were as individual as nor-
mals. Why had she thought him shallow, even trivial?
Because of his fascination with ancient wars and weaponry?
THE CTTY WHO FOUGHT
111
"I'm on my way, Simeon," she said. "Gusky, step on it. We'll get out of your
way. This won't take long."
"It had better not," the ex-Navy man said, his voice still carrying a trace of
resentment. "Wilco. Out"
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