Triad. Sheila Finch

Libra burns above my house in the mountains.”

      Libra, the scale, symbol of the Dowists, signifying balance in all things. She didn’t want to be more obvious than that, not with HANA’s ever-present ear.

      “How—how nice,” Gia stammered. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Libra from Earth.”

      It was really just as well.

      She drained her kav. “I’ll have a word with Madel for you, but I’m not promising results.”

      Gia’s face came alive with pleasure. “Thank you. I won’t allow anything like that to happen again. There’ll be nothing but text-cube procedures from now on.”

      “Some of the situations we meet out here haven’t been recorded on the text-cubes yet.”

      She watched the girl go. Something suggested Gia needed hugging. But she’d never allow anyone close enough to do it.

      Reaching the medbay, she took the door to the lab. Sterile white light drenched the small lab, in stark contrast to the rest-cycle dimness elsewhere. Lil blinked, her tired eyes adjusting slowly. Madel was out of sight behind the crowded growth tanks, supply hoses and gauges. Lil looked over the full rows of neatly arranged lab bottles each containing something unspeakable with a label glued squarely in the middle and lettered in Madel’s precise hand. Some things were slow to change. Though the rest of Earth’s population spoke one of the three levels of Inglis, medical specialists still employed a language that had been dead for two millennia.

      “What’re you smiling at?” Madel demanded, emerging from behind the coils of wire and plastitubing.

      “Muscular reflex only, brought on by extreme tiredness.”

      Madel began slicing a fungus as Lil watched. It had the color and texture of a lifeless human hand; drops of blackish sap oozed out like blood. She shuddered.

      “Wait’ll I get this under the scope.” Madel deposited a slice on a slide and whisked it under a sensor. She wiped her hands on her white smock and waited. The large display screen canted above the bench lit up, and a series of calculations printed themselves rapidly across it.

      Lil decided to be blunt. “When’re you letting Gia go planetside?”

      “Analysis completed, MedSpec Karek.” HANA’s voice sounded hollow in the cold lab.

      “But you still haven’t told me why,” Madel complained.

      “Perhaps there was an imprecision in the manner of collecting the specimens?”

      “You know very well there wasn’t.”

      HANA was silent.

      Lil’s tiredness vanished. Whatever question Madel had posed had stumped the computer, and that was an interesting thought. She swung out a nest-stool and sat down.

      Madel paced, her expression grim. “The ones Zion collected may have been damaged, but I took care these weren’t.”

      “Would you care to explain?”

      Madel jumped as if she’d forgotten Lil’s presence.

      “If it’s not too technical, I mean.”

      Madel ignored the sarcasm. “All the plant specimens that’ve been brought up here from the planet have died within ten hours. Likewise the microbes and minute life forms that were in the soil samples. I can’t even keep a simple fungus alive.”

      “So what? We’re not a science ship.”

      Madel stopped pacing in front of Lil and perched her long, thin frame against the edge of the lab bench. The smock gaped, revealing the uniform beneath. Other than Shelly, Lil thought, only Madel wore her uniform all the time. The difference was, Madel complained endlessly about the job it represented.

      “It makes me uneasy to think there’s something I can’t identify. But as you pointed out, we’re not a science ship. I’m just the bonesetter on a merchant tub. But you see why I can’t give you the okay to let Gia go down again tomorrow.”

      “Zion’s still down there.”

      Madel returned Lil’s gaze steadily. “I always had the fantasy, right from the moment he came aboard, that one of us wasn’t going to make the return trip.”

      “Are you suggesting I abandon him?”

      Madel shook her head. “But I can’t help what happens to him. I didn’t want him along in the first place. The rest of us are my responsibility.”

      “Mine,” Lil said.

      “Ours,” Madel corrected. “Or rather, yours, mine, and HANA’s—a regular triumvirate.”

      Lil raised an eyebrow. “Something’s really bothering you tonight.”

      “Same thing as ever. I keep thinking what a waste. All that talent—dedication—knowledge—all of it to be little more than a LabTech, cutting up tissue samples for a computer to analyze. I’d dreamed of being a surgeon until that stupid accident.” She held up the stunted index finger of her right hand.

      There was no use arguing with Madel when she was feeling sorry for herself. And tonight Lil was tired of dealing with her crew’s neuroses. She had her own shattered ambitions. Whoever asked her about them? She turned to leave.

      “You’re underestimating the importance of this planet, Lil.”

      “CenCom obviously agrees there’s profit in it—”

      “Profit!” Madel made an oath of the word. “If we had the courage to take advantage of the situation, this could be the luckiest thing that ever happened to us—a great memorial to your last command.”

      “We’ll probably get a good bonus.”

      Madel reached over suddenly to the computer keyboard. HANA’s green light went out. “I’m not talking bonus, Lil. I’m talking colony.”

      It was an incongruous word to use on a freighter. Lil stared thoughtfully at her MedSpec, seeing the bitter lines that had bloomed around her eyes and mouth in the last few years.

      “Have you considered how few unclaimed, Earth-type planets we’ve seen in the Orion Arm?”

      “None, actually,” Lil said.

      “Exactly. We’re in a position to claim Earth’s first extra-solar territory. Establish a human colony.”

      There was no denying the idea was exciting, a chance to achieve something worthwhile at last. But even as she was aware of the faster beat of her heart, logic reasserted itself. “The Sagittan charter we operate under forbids claiming, or establishing colonies on, worlds with sentient populations. That seems to rule out Ithaca 3-15d rather effectively.”

      “If the Ents are sentient.”

      “Apparently they have a language.”

      “So what? Bees have a language.”

      Lil was silent. According to the Sagittan charter governing interactions between different species—a charter Earth had had little choice in signing—there was a fine line separating life forms displaying high intelligence from life forms that were sentient. The conduct expected of charter signatories in relation to each was carefully spelled out. As to which category the natives of Ithaca 3-15d belonged, that would depend heavily on the xenolinguist’s assessment of their language. A LangSpec knew the tests the Sagittans demanded.

      “Haven’t you noticed the stuff that comes off this mudball?” Madel asked. “Didn’t you feel anything as you rubbed the beads between your fingers?”

      She’d felt a slight buzz, she remembered now, as if her fingertips had come in contact with a mild electrical source. “Maybe.”

      “Almost as if they had hallucinogenic properties?” Madel persisted.

      “Doesn’t