XI
The shooting died down to occasional rattles of small arms, usuallyfollowed by yells for quarter. An explosion thundered from across thecrater. The _Lester Dawes_ fired her big guns a few times. A machinegun stuttered. A pistol banged, far away. It took two hours before allthe pirates had been hunted out of hiding and captured, or killed iffound by their former captives, who were accepting no surrenderwhatever.
Blackie Perales had been one of the latter; he had been found, hisclothes in rags and covered with dirt and grease, hiding under amachine in one of the shops back of the dock in which the _HarrietBarne_ was being rebuilt. He had tried to claim that he was one of thepirates' prisoners who had eluded the roundup at the beginning of thebattle and had been hiding there since. As soon as the real prisonerssaw and recognized him, they had fallen upon him and clubbed, kickedand stamped him out of any resemblance to humanity. At that, what hegot was probably only a fraction of what he deserved.
The egg breakage had been heavy, and not at all confined to the badeggs. A third gunboat, the _Banshee_, had been destroyed with allhands during the final attack from outside; in addition, a dozen menhad been killed during the fighting in the galleries. Everybody wasshocked, except Klem Zareff, who had been in battles before. He wassurprised that the casualties had been so light.
At first glance, the spaceport looked like a handsome prize ofvictory. The docks and workshops were all in good condition; at worst,they only needed cleaning up. There was a collapsium plant, with itsown mass-energy converter. There were foundries and machine-shops andforging-shops and a rolling-mill, almost completely robotic. At first,Conn thought that it might be possible to build a hyperdrive shiphere, without having to go to Koshchei at all.
Closer examination disabused him of this hope. There was nothing ofwhich the framework of a ship could be built, and no way of producingheavy structural steel. The rolling-mill was good enough to turn outeighth-inch sheet material which when plated with a few micromicronsof collapsium would be as good as a hundred feet of lead againstspace-radiations, but that was the ship's skin. A ship needed askeleton, too. The only thing to do was go on with the _HarrietBarne_.
It was sunset before he finished his tour of inspection and let hisjeep down in a vehicle hall off the lower gallery outside what hadoriginally been the spaceport officers' club. It was crowded, and avictory celebration seemed to be getting under way. He saw his fatherwith Yves Jacquemont, Sylvie, Tom Brangwyn, and Captain Nichols.Nichols had gotten clean clothes from the pirates' store of loot, andhad bathed and shaved. So had Jacquemont, though he had contentedhimself with trimming his beard. It took him a second or so torecognize the young lady in feminine garb as his erstwhile battlecomrade, Sylvie.
"Well, our pay goes on from the day we were captured," Nichols wassaying. "My instructions are to resume command of the ship. Tomorrow,they're sending a party out to go over her."
Conn stopped short. "What's this about the ship?"
"Captain Nichols was in screen contact with his company's office inStorisende," Rodney Maxwell said. "They're continuing him in commandof her."
"But ... but we took that ship! We lost three gunboats and abouttwenty-five men...."
"She still belongs to Transcontinent & Overseas," his father said."That's been the law on stolen property as long as there's been anylaw."
Of course; he should have known that. Did know it; just didn't think.
"We broke an awful lot of eggs for no omelet; fought a battle fornothing."
"Well, of course, I'm prejudiced," Sylvie said, "but I don't thinkgetting us out of the hands of that bloodthirsty maniac and hiscutthroats was nothing."
"Wiping out the Perales gang wasn't nothing, Conn," Tom Brangwyn said."You got no idea at all how bad things were, the last couple ofyears."
"I know. I'm sorry." He was ashamed of himself. "But I needed a ship,and now we have no ship at all."
"A ship means something to you?" Yves Jacquemont asked.
"Yes." He told him why. "If we could get to Koshchei, we could build ahypership of our own, and get our brandy and things to markets wherewe could get a decent price for them."
"I know. I was in and out of Storisende on these owner-captain trampsfor a couple of years before I decided to retire and settle here,"Jacquemont said. "The profit on a cargo of Poictesme brandy on Terraor Baldur is over a thousand percent."
"Well, don't give up too soon," Nichols advised. "You can't keep the_Harriet Barne_, of course, but you're entitled to prize-money on her,and that ought to buy you something you could build a spaceship outof."
"That's right," Jacquemont said. "Everything else besides the framecan be made here. Look, these pirates burned me out; except for themoney I have in the bank, I lost everything, home, business and all.As soon as I can find a place for Sylvie to stay, I'll come back andgo to work for your company building a spaceship. And a lot of the menwho were working here are farm-tramps and drifters, one job's as goodas another as long as they get paid for it. And I know a few good menin Storisende--engineers--who'd be glad for a job, too."
"You think it would be all right with Mother and Flora if Sylviestayed with us?" Conn asked.
"Of course it would; they'd be glad to have her." Rodney Maxwellturned to Yves Jacquemont. "Let's consider that fixed up. Now,suppose you and I go into Storisende, and...."
The Transcontinent & Overseas people arrived at Barathrum Spaceportthe next morning; a rear-rank vice-president, a front-ranklegal-eagle, and three engineers. They were horrified at what theysaw. The _Harriet Barne_ had been gutted. Bulkheads and decks hadbeen ripped out and relocated incomprehensibly; the bridge and thecontrol room under it were gone; she had been stripped to her framework,and the whole underside was sheathed in shimmering collapsium.
"Great Ghu!" the vice-president almost howled. "That isn't _our_ship!"
"That's the _Harriet Barne_," her captain said. "She looks a littleragged now, but--"
"You helped these pirates do this to her?"
"If I hadn't, they'd have cut my throat and gotten somebody else tohelp them. My throat's more valuable to me than the ship is to you; Ican't get anybody to build me a new one."
"Well, understand," one of the engineers said, "they were convertingher into an interplanetary ship. It wouldn't cost much to finish thejob."
"We need an interplanetary ship like we need a hole in the head!" Thevice-president turned to Rodney Maxwell. "Just how much prize-money doyou think you're entitled to for this wreck?"
"I wouldn't know; that's up to Sterber, Flynn & Chen-Wong. Up to thecourt, if we can settle it any other way."
"You mean you'd litigate about this?" the lawyer demanded, and beganto laugh.
"If we have to. Look, if you people don't want her, sign her over toLitchfield Exploration & Salvage. But if you do want her, you'll haveto pay for her."
"We'll give you twenty thousand sols," the lawyer said. "We don't wantto be tightfisted. After all, you fought a gang of pirates and lostsome men and a couple of boats; we have some moral obligation to you.But you'll have to realize that this ship, in her present state, ispractically valueless."
"The collapsium on her is worth twice that, and the engines are wortheven more," Jacquemont said. "I worked on them."
The discussion ended there. By midafternoon, Luther Chen-Wong, thejunior partner of the law firm, arrived from Storisende with a coupleof engineers of his own. Reporters began arriving; both sides wereanxious to keep them away from the ship. Conn took care of them,assisted by Sylvie, who had rummaged an even more attractive costumeout of what she called the loot-cellar. The reporters all used up alot of film footage on her. And the Fawzis' Office Gang arrived fromForce Command, bitterly critical of the value of the spaceport againstits cost in lives and equipment. Brangwyn and Zareff returned to ForceCommand with them. A Planetary Air Patrol ship arrived and removed thecaptured pirates. The liberated prisoners were airlifted toLitchfield.
The third day after the battle, Conn and his father and
Sylvie and herfather flew to Litchfield. To Conn's surprise, Flora greeted himcordially, and Wade Lucas, rather stiffly, congratulated him. Maybe itwas as Tom Brangwyn had said; he hadn't been on Poictesme in the lastfour or five years and didn't know how bad things had gotten. Hismother seemed to think he had won the Battle of Barathrumsingle-handed.
He was even more surprised and gratified that Flora made friends withSylvie immediately. His mother, however, regarded the engineer'sdaughter with badly concealed hostility, and seemed to doubt thatSylvie was the kind of girl she wanted her son getting involved with.Outwardly, of course, she was quite gracious.
Rodney Maxwell and Yves Jacquemont flew to Storisende the nextmorning, both more optimistic about finding a ship than Conn thoughtthe circumstances warranted. Conn stayed at home for the next fewdays, luxuriating in idleness. He and Sylvie tore down his mother'shousehold robots and built sound-sensors into them, keying them torespond to their names and to a few simple commands, and includingrecorded-voice responses in a thick Sheshan accent. All the smartpeople on Terra, he explained, had Sheshan humanoid servants.
His mother was delighted. Robots that would answer when she spoke tothem were a lot more companionable. She didn't seem to think, however,that Sylvie's mechanical skills were ladylike accomplishments. Nicegirls, Litchfield model, weren't quite so handy with a spot-welder.That was what Conn liked about Sylvie; she was like the girls he'dknown at the University.
They were strolling after dinner, down the Mall. The air was sharp andwarned that autumn had definitely arrived; the many brilliant stars,almost as bright as the moon of Terra, were coming out in the dusk.
"Conn, this thing about Merlin," she began. "Do you really believe init? Ever since Dad and I came to Poictesme, I've been hearing aboutit, but it's just a story, isn't it?"
He was tempted to tell her the truth, and sternly put the temptationbehind him.
"Of course there's a Merlin, Sylvie, and it's going to do wonderfulthings when we find it."
He looked down the starlit Mall ahead of him. Somebody, maybe LesterDawes and Morgan Gatworth and Lorenzo Menardes, had gotten thingsfinished and cleaned up. The pavement was smooth and unbroken; thelitter had vanished.
"It's done wonderful things already, just because people startedlooking for it," he said. "Some of these days, they're going torealize that they had Merlin all along and didn't know it."
There was a faint humming from somewhere ahead, and he was wonderingwhat it was. Then they came to the long escalators, and he saw thatthey were running.
"Why, look! They got them fixed! They're running!"
Sylvie grinned at him and squeezed his arm.
"I get you, chum," she said. "Of course there's a Merlin."
Maybe he didn't have to tell her the truth.
When they returned to the house, his mother greeted him:
"Conn, your father's been trying to get you ever since you went out.Call him, right away; Ritz-Gartner Hotel, in Storisende. It'ssomething about a ship."
It look a little time to get his father on-screen. He was excited andhappy.
"Hi, Conn; we have one," he said.
"What kind of a ship?"
"You know her. The _Harriet Barne_."
That he hadn't expected. Something off Mothball Row that would have tobe flown to Barathrum and torn down and completely rebuilt, but notthe one that was there already, partly finished.
"How the dickens did you wangle that?"
"Oh, it was Yves' idea, to start with. He knew about her; the T. &O.'s been losing money on her for years. He said if they had to payprize-money on her and then either restore her to original conditionor finish the job and build a spaceship they didn't want, it wouldalmost bankrupt the company. They got up as high as fifty thousandsols for prize-money and we just laughed at them. So we made aproposition of our own.
"We proposed organizing a new company, subsidiary to both L. E. & S.and T. & O., to engage in interplanetary shipping; both companies toassign their equity in the _Harriet Barne_ to the new company, thework of completing her to be done at our spaceport and the labor costto be shared. This would give us our spaceship, and get T. & O. offthe hook all around. Everybody was for it except the president of T. &O. Know anything about him?"
Conn shook his head. His father continued:
"Name's Jethro Sastraman. He could play Scrooge in _Christmas Carol_without any makeup at all. He hasn't had a new idea since he got outof college, and that was while the War was still going on.'Preposterous; utterly visionary and impractical,'" his fathermimicked. "Fortunately, a majority of the big stockholders didn'tagree; they finally bullied him into agreeing. We're calling the newcompany Alpha-Interplanetary, we have an application for charter in,and that'll go through almost automatically."
"Who's going to be the president of this new company?"
"You know him. Character named Rodney Maxwell. Yves is going to bevice-president in charge of operations; he's flying to Barathrumtomorrow or the next day with a gang of technicians we're recruiting.T. & O. are giving us Clyde Nichols and Mack Vibart, and a lot of menfrom their shipyard. I'm staying here in Storisende; we're opening anoffice here. By this time next week, we're all going to wish we'd beenborn quintuplets."
"And Conn Maxwell, I suppose, will be an influentialnon-office-holding stockholder?"
"That's right. Just like in L. E. & S."