Startide Rising (The Uplift Saga, #2) - David Brin Page 0,2

compensations for being the only human boy on a starship crewed mostly by adult dolphins.

A starship which wasn’t going anywhere at the moment, Toshio reminded himself. The acute resentment of Keepiru’s goading was replaced by the more persistent, hollow worry that he might never leave the water world of Kithrup and see home.

* Slow your travel—boy sled-rider *

* Exploring pod—does gather hither *

* Hikahi comes—we wait here for her *

Toshio looked up. Brookida, the elderly dolphin metallurgist, had come up alongside on the left. Toshio whistled a reply in Trinary.

* Hikahi comes—my sled is stopping *

He eased the sled’s throttle back.

On his sonar screen, Toshio saw tiny echoes converging from far ahead. The scouts returning. He looked up and saw Hist-t and Keepiru playing at the surface.

Brookida switched to Anglic. Though somewhat shrill and stuttered, it was still better than Toshio’s Trinary. Dolphins, after all, had been modified by generations of genetic engineering to take up human styles, not the other way around.

“You’ve found no t-traces of the needed substances, Toshio?” Brookida asked.

Toshio glanced at the molecular sieve. “No, sir. Nothing so far. This water is unbelievably pure, considering the metal content of the planet’s crust. Hardly any heavy metal salts.”

“And nothing on the long ssscan?”

“No resonance on the bands I’ve been checking, though the noise level is awfully high. I’m not sure I’d be able to pick out monopole-saturated nickel, let alone the other stuff we’re looking for. It’s like trying to find that needle in a haystack.”

It was a paradox. The planet had metals in superabundance. One reason Captain Creideiki chose this world as a refuge. Yet the water was relatively pure … enough to allow dolphins to swim freely, though some complained of itching, and each would need chelating treatments back on the ship.

The explanation lay all around them, in the plants and fishes.

Calcium did not make up the bones of Kithrupan life forms. Other metals did. The water was strained and sieved clean by biological filters. As a result, the sea shone all around with the bright colors of metal and oxides of metal. The gleaming dorsal spines of living fish—the silvery seedpods of underwater plants—all contrasted with the mundane green of chlorophyllic leaves and fronds.

Dominating the scenery were metal-mounds, giant, spongy islands shaped by millions of generations of coral-like creatures, whose metallo-organic exoskeletons accumulated into huge, flat-topped mountains rising a few meters above the mean water mark.

Atop the islands drill-trees grew, sending metal-tipped roots through each mound to harvest organics and silicates, depositing a non-metallic layer on top and creating a cavity underneath. It was a strange pattern. Streaker’s onboard Library had offered no explanation.

Toshio’s instruments detected clumps of pure tin, mounds of chromium fish eggs, coral colonies built from a variety of bronze, but so far no convenient, easily gathered piles of vanadium. No lumps of the special variety of nickel they sought.

What they needed was a miracle—one enabling a crew of dolphins, with seven humans and a chimpanzee, to repair their ship and get the hell out of this part of the galaxy before their pursuers caught up with them.

At best, they had a few weeks to get away. The alternative was capture by any of a dozen not-entirely-rational ET races. At worst it could mean interstellar war on a scale not seen in a million years.

It all made Toshio feel small, helpless, and very young.

Toshio could hear, faintly, the high-pitched sonar echoes of the returning scouts. Each distant squeak had its tiny, colored counterpoint on his scanner screen.

Then two gray forms appeared from the east, diving at last into the gathering above, cavorting, playfully leaping and biting.

Finally one of the dolphins arched and dove straight down toward Toshio. “Hikahi’s coming and wants the sssled topside,” Keepiru chattered quickly, slurring the words almost into indecipherability. “Try not to get lost on the way up-p-p-p.”

Toshio grimaced as he vented ballast. Keepiru didn’t have to make his contempt so obvious. Even speaking Anglic normally, fins usually sounded as if they were giving the listener a long series of razzberries.

The sled rose in a cloud of tiny bubbles. When he reached the surface, water drained along the sides in long, gurgling rivulets. Toshio locked the throttle and rolled over to undo his faceplate.

Sudden silence was a relief. The whine of the sled, the pings of the sonar, and squeaks of the fins all vanished. A fresh breeze swept past his damp, straight, black hair and cooled the hot feeling in his ears. It carried scents of