“Trac definitely needs to stay on the shuttle,” she agreed. There could be more traps, a trap designed specifically for someone like Trac. “You have good instincts,” she told Tim.
He looked surprised. “I do.”
“It’s part of being human,” she told him and his look of surprise deepened. He was, she realized, still working on that human part of himself. “It’s a work in progress for all of us.”
“Timmy’s in the well,” Lt. Dish said, over the comms.
Tim was too startled to even blink. Luckily Riina spoke what he was thinking.
“What?”
“It’s, well, Lassie, but you wouldn’t know that.” Lt. Dish, stopped, “it’s a kind of Earth shorthand for someone needing help.”
If someone needed help that the huge avian couldn’t handle? Tim wasn’t sure they could.
Riina met his gaze and shrugged. “At this point, anything is possible.” She stepped closer to the cloaked shuttle and looked up.
“T’Korrin, does someone need our help?”
She was asking the bird. He opened his mouth to point out that what they needed were star charts, flight data, a path home. But T’Korrin’s wings lifted, half lifting it off its perch.
“Is that yes?” he asked, dubiously.
“I think it might be,” Riina said.
Tim thought about asking if Lira could join them, but he had a feeling that would include Dr. Walker. That exposed too many humans to risk. He wished he could persuade Riina to go back inside the shuttle.
“Okay,” Tim said, “how about this.” He couldn’t believe he was talking to a bird, or possibly two birds. “We go see what we can do to help…whoever. You lift, Trac, and see if you can find some kind of central control for this place. I have a feeling there is more we need to know.”
“There is always more we need to know,” Trac said, “but if you can get the avian to get off, I will go see what I can do.”
“Just don’t get out of the shuttle to do it,” Tim cautioned. All they needed to turn this from a Charlie Foxtrot—Earth for messed up, he understood—to a major catastrophe was for Trac to get taken over and turned against them.
“I’ll keep an eye on him,” Lt. Dish said.
“Thank you,” Riina said, when Tim didn’t respond.
He couldn’t respond. Because if he did, he would say, “It needed only that.” So, he didn’t.
“Which way?” he asked instead.
The large avian lifted off the shuttle. So did T’Korrin. The avian landed on the debris to their right.
“You can go,” Tim said. He’d feel better with the shuttle in the clear. Better? Well, less awful.
When the shuttle had lifted away, stirring up more of the nasty dust, Tim took a moment to be grateful for his suit’s filters that made it possible for him to not smell that stirred up air.
Before he could do more than think this, the avian had dropped back into the vacated space.
“Weren’t we just here?” Riina asked.
T’Korrin flew down and landed on the avian’s head. Then he waved his wings and danced from one foot to the other.
“He doesn’t, he couldn’t want us to…” Riina’s voice trailed off as the large avian lowered its head and angled its body.
“I think he does,” Tim said.
“Well,” Riina said, “we did say we’d help.”
