Read The Ship Who Won for Free Online Page B

for her thoughts.
    Keff groaned softly in his sleep. Carialle activated the
    camera just inside his closed door for a brief look, then
    dimmed the lights and left him alone. The brawn was
    faceup on his bunk with one arm across his forehead and
    right eye. The thin thermal cover had been pushed down
    and was draped modestly across his groin and one leg,
    which twitched now and again. One of his precious collection of real-books lay open facedown on the nightstand.
    The tableau was worthy of a painting by the Old Masters of
    Earth-Hercules resting from his labors. Frustrated from
    missing his close encounter of the female kind, Keff had
    exercised himself into a stiff mass of sinews. His muscles
    were paying him back for the abuse by making his rest
    uneasy. He'd rise for his next shift aching in every joint,
    until he worked the stiffhess out again. As the years went
    by it took longer for Keff to limber up, but he kept at it,
    taking pride in his excellent physical condition.
    Softshells were, in Carialles opinion, funny people.
    They'd go to such lengths to build up their bodies which
    then had to be maintained with a significant effort, dispro-portionate to the long-term effect. They were so
    unprotected. Even the stress of exercise, which they considered healthy, was damaging to some of them. They
    strove to accomplish goals which would have perished in a
    few generations, leaving no trace of their passing. Yet they
    cheerfully continued to "do" their mite, hoping something
    would survive to be admired by another generation or
    species.
    Carialle was very fond of Keff. She didn't want him
    anguished or disabled. He had been instrumental in
    restoring her to a useful existence and while he wasn't
    Fanine-who could be?-he had many endearing qualities. He had brought her back to wanting to live, and then
    he had neatly caught her up in his own special goal-to
    find a species Humanity could freely interact with, make
    cultural and scientific exchanges, open sociological vistas.
    She was concerned that his short life span, and the even
    shorter term of their contract with Central Worlds Exploration, would be insufficient to accomplish the goal they
    had set for themselves. She would have to continue it on
    her own one day. What if the beings they sought did not,
    after all, exist?
    Shellpeople had good memories but not infallible ones,
    she reminded herself. In three hundred, four hundred
    years, would she even be able to remember Keff? Would
    she want to, lest the memory be as painful as the anticipation of such loss was now? If I find them after you're . . .
    well, I'll make sure they're named after you, she vowed
    silently, listening to his quiet breathing. That immortality
    at least she could offer him.
    So far, in light of that lofty goal, the aliens that the CK
    team had encountered were disappointing. Though interesting to the animal behaviorist and xenobiologist, Losels,
    Wyvems, Hydrae, and the Rodents of Unusual Size, et cet-era ad nauseam, were all non-sentient.
    To date, the CK's one reasonable hope to date of finding
    an equal or superior species came five years and four
    months before, when they had intercepted a radio transmission from a race of beings who sounded marvelously
    civilized and intelligent. As Keff had scrambled to make IT
    understand them, he and Carialle became excited, thinking that they had found the species with whom they could
    exchange culture and technology. They soon discovered
    that the inhabitants of Jove II existed in an atmosphere and
    pressure that made it utterly impractical to establish a
    physical presence. Pen pals only. Central Worlds would
    have to limit any interaction to radio contact with these
    Acid Breathers. Not a total loss, but not the real thing. Not
    contact.
    Maybe this time on this mission into R sector, there
    would be something worthwhile, the real gold that didn't
    turn to sand when rapped on the anvil. That hope lured
    them farther into unexplored space, away from