“The puzzled and curious Maxim Malaika is here, if that’s what you mean.” He moved into the center of the transceiver’s pickup. “You’re one up on me.”
“Apologies,” said the figure. “I am named Riidi WW, Baron Second of Tyrton Six, Officer in the Emperor Maahn the Fourth’s Circumspatial Defense Forces. My ship is named Arr, and we are accompanied in travel by her sister-ship, the Unn.”
Malaika spoke in the direction of the omnipickup mike. “All that. Your mother must have been long-winded. You boys are a bit off your usual tracks, aren’t you?”
The Baron’s face reflected mild surprise. As Flinx suspected, it was mock. “Why, captain! The Blight is unclaimed space and open to all. There are many fine, colonizable, unclaimed planets here, free to any spacegoing race. While it is true that in the past His Majesty’s government has been more involved in outward expansion, an occasional search for planets of exceptional promise does sometimes penetrate this far.”
“A very concise and seemingly plausible explanation,” whispered Truzenzuzex to Malaika from out of range of the audiovisual pickups.
“Yes,” the merchant whispered back. “I don’t believe a word of it either. Wolf, change course forty-five degrees x-plus.”
“Done, Captain.”
“Well, Baron, it’s always nice to hear from someone away out in the middle of nowhere, and I am sure that two of his Majesty’s destroyers will be more than a match for any planet of ‘exceptional promise’ you may happen to find. I wish you luck in your prospecting.”
“Your offers of good fortune are accepted in the spirit in which they are given, Captain Malaika. In return I should like to extend the hospitality of my ship and crew, most especially of our galley. I am fortunate enough to have on board a chef who works wonders with the cuisine of thirty-two different systems. The fellow is a wizard, and would be proud to have the opportunity to display his talents before such discerning gourmets as yourselves.”
Wolf’s low whisper cut across the cabin. “They’ve changed course to match our new one, sir. And accelerated, too.”
“Keep on course. And pick it up enough to match their increase. But do it subtly, mwanamume, subtly!” He turned back to the screen.
“Truly a gracious offer, Baron, and ordinarily I would consider it an honor and a delight to accept. However, I am afraid that circumstances warrant we decline this particular invitation. You see, we had fish for supper last evening, and I am certain it was not prepared half so well as your chef could manage, because we have all been suffering from severe pains of the lower intestinal tract today. If we may, I’ll put off your kind offer till a later date.”
Away from the mike he whispered, “The rest of you get back to your cabins and strap down. I’ll try to keep you up on what happens through your intership viewers. But if we have to bump around a bit, I don’t want you all bouncing off the woodwork and messing up my carpets!”
Flinx, Tse-Mallory, and Truzenzuzex made a scramble for the exitway, being careful to stay out of range of the tri-dee video pickup. But apparently Truzenzuzex couldn’t resist a dig at a persistent and long-time enemy. The thranx had had dealings with the AAnn long before mankind.
He stuck his head into range of the pickups and yelled, “Know, O sand-eater, that I have sampled AAnn cuisine before, and that my gizzard has found it to be gritty to the palate. Those who dine upon rocks rapidly assume the disposition and mental capacity of the same!”
The AAnn bristled, the scales along its neck-ridge rising. “Listen, dirt-dweller, I’ll inform you that . . .!” He caught it in mid-curse and recomposed himself with an effort. Feigning a sigh where he no doubt would have preferred a threat, he said, “I retain the courtesies while it is evident they have departed your ship, Captain. Have it your way. You cannot outrun us, you know. Now that we are within easy range, my detector operators will be most careful not to lose you. It will be only a matter of time before we come within filial distance of you. At that moment I would hope that you would have reconsidered my really exceptionally polite and generous invitation, and will lower your field. Otherwise,” he said grimly, “I am very much afraid we shall be forced to open you up like a can of zith-paste.”
The screen abruptly went blank.
In his cabin, Flinx lay down on his bed and began to strap into the emergency harness that was affixed permanently to its sides. He had Pip next to his left hand, curled around a bar on that side of the bed. He admonished it to be quiet. The snake, sensing that important things were happening, did as it was told with a minimum of fuss and bother.
When he had finished and settled himself into the closest thing to a comfortable position he could manage in the awkward harness, he turned on the little screen which hung suspended from the roof of the cabin. It cleared instantly to reveal Malaika, Atha, and Wolf busy in Control. Unwillingly, he began to recall more familiar sights and smells. It embarrassed him, but at that moment he wished fervently he were back home in Drallar, juggling before an appreciative crowd and making small boys laugh by telling them the names of their secret loves. What he could interpret of the mind/thoughts of the AAnn commander was not pleasant. The feeling passed abruptly as though a cool rag had been drawn across his mind, and he settled himself grimly to wait.
In the huge, exotically furnished cabin which formed her quarters, Sissiph lay alone on the big bed, curled in her harness. Her knees nearly touched her chest. She felt very alone. The order to don harness had been delivered in a tough, no-nonsense tone that Maxy had never used with her before, and she was frightened. The luxurious accoutrements, the intricately carved furniture and sensuous cantilevered lighting, the king’s ransom in clothing scattered about the room, all suddenly seemed as frivolous and flighty as the toys of a child. She had known, she had simply known, when she had chosen to try to replace that other little witch—what had been her name?—as Malaika’s steady Lynx, that something terrible like this was going to happen. She had known it!
Merchants were so damned unpredictable!
She did not throw the switch which would lower the screen and put her in communication with Control and the rest of the ship. Let him survive without her for a while! Instead she buried herself as deeply as she could in the purrsilk pillows and promised herself that if she survived this awful, horrible journey into no place, she was going to find some nice hundred-and-fifty-year-old man . . . on the verge of death. A senile, wealthy one, with whom she could look forward to a nice, quiet, comfortable, short, married life . . . and a long, wealthy widowhood.
Bran Tse-Mallory was lying in his bed quietly reviewing the hundred and five maxims of the state of Indifferent Contentment. It was originally invented by a brilliant graduate student to help nervous students relax for examinations. It would do duty in other situations. The current one, for example. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get past twenty-one. It kept repeating itself over and over in his mind every time he tried to concentrate on twenty-two.
“Mankind must without a doubt be the most conceited race in the universe, for who else believes that God has nothing better to do than sit around all day and help him out of tight spots?”
It was an unworthy thought for one who supposedly had mellowed so over the years, but how, oh, how he wished for the comforting grip of a gun—any kind of gun—under his fingers. They tightened and relaxed reflexively, making deep furrows in the softness of the blankets.
The Eint Truzenzuzex was lying quietly on his modified lounge, legs fully extended, foothands and truehands crossed on his chest in the proper Oo position. He tried to keep one half of his mind focused on the ship viewer, while the other half droned through the ritual.
“I, Tru, of the family Zen, clan zu, the Hive Zex, do hereforth pray that I shall not bring disgrace on my-our ancestors. I, Tru, of the family Zen, clan zu, the Hive Zex, do hereforth pray that in the coming Time of Trouble I may reflect credit on my first-mother, clan mother, and Hive mother. I, Tru, of the family Zen, clan. . . .”
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Atha Moon and the man called Wolf thought otherwise. They were much too busy for anything else. And Maxim Malaika, the man who was responsible for them all, did likewise. Also, he was too scared to have time for trivialities like worry. Wolf broke into his nonthoughts.
“They’ve closed to within five mils, sir. At this rate they’ll be within particle-beam range in five, ten minutes.”
“Choovy! And other unmentionables! Damn!”
Atha looked back at him worriedly. “Couldn’t we try to dodge them, Maxim? I mean, captain?”
“La, hasha, Atha. No way. Those are AAnn destroyers out there. They’re built to chase down and slice up ships much faster than we are. The Gloryhole is a rich man’s whim, not a navy ship. But it is something of a speedster, sharti. Of necessity. With any kind of distance between us at initial contact we might have slipped out of detector range and lost them, but they were on top of us before we even knew who they were. Anyway, there are two of them. One, labda, we might still slip, but never two. Not at this range.”
Atha thought. “Couldn’t we just, well, surrender and take our chances? I mean, everything considered, that Baron didn’t seem all that awful. Just impatient. And we aren’t at war or anything with his people.”
“Ndoto. A dream. The AAnn don’t operate that way, Atha.” His lips were firmed, tight. “At best they are . . . intolerant . . . with folk who cooperate with them. With those who don’t. . . . If you’re curious about details, ask Wolf. He was in an AAnn prison camp for five years, during the last real humanx-AAnn conflict. There may be others who survived that long in one of those hell-pits and lived to tell of it. If so, I haven’t met him.”
“The captain is right, Miss Moon. I would much rather throw myself into space to blow up like a deep-sea fish than be captured by those again.” He nodded at the screen, where the white dots continued their inexorable approach. “Among their other affectations, they are very adept at the more refined forms of torture. Very. It is something of an art form with them, you see. Most of my scars don’t show. They’re up here, you see.” He tapped the side of his head. “If you wish some detailed descriptions. . . .”
Atha shuddered. “Never mind.”
“This Riidi fellow seems fairly decent . . . for an AAnn, but to take the chance. . . . If I could spare Wolf from plotting, or myself from the computer . . . tandunono! No, wait!” He leaned over the mike pickup. “Ninyi nyote! Tse-Mallory, sociologist. And you, bug! Have either of you ever handled a spatial weapon before? Even in simulation?”
In his cabin Tse-Mallory nearly broke a finger struggling with his harness. And Truzenzuzex broke off his ritual in a place and manner that would have earned him the condemnation of every member of his clan, had they known of it.
“You mean you’ve got a gun on this tub?” shouted Tse-Mallory. “What kind? Where? Speak up, mercantilist! Implosion weapons, particle guns, missile tubes, explosive projectiles, rocks . . . Tru and I will handle it!”
“Je? I hope so. Listen to me. Behind your cabins, naam, storage compartment. There’s a walkway, it opens into the cargo balloon. Then a pullway. Go to the end of the main pullway, you can’t get lost. You’ll find branches there. Be careful, there’s no gravity in that part of the ship. Take the one that goes ninety degrees north of your horizontal. At the top you’ll find a medium charge interstice laser, mounted on a universal belt encircling the ship. I’m powering it now.” He paused momentarily while his hands did things below the range of the camera’s pickup.
“It is a single-person mounting. Sorry, philosoph. But you could help him with the computer. If he doesn’t have to watch the imageouts and battlescreen at the same time . . .”
The two men of peace were already on their way.
Malaika uttered a silent prayer in the hopes that the two scientists wouldn’t cut up the ship and turned back to his tables.
“How are we doing, Wolf?”
“They’re still closing, sir. Not as rapidly now that we’ve picked up our own speed, but still closing. You want to go on maximum?”
“No. No, not yet. That’s strictly our last gasp, if we need it. Let them continue to think the Glory’s just another freighter for awhile. First I want to see what our braincases can do with the popgun.”
The braincases in question were making their way along the pullway at breakneck speed. Fortunately, there was no drifting cargo to impede their progress. The great metal-fabric enclosure was almost completely empty. A few cases drifted lazily in their spiderweb enclosures, giving the pale green cavern and its ghostly atmosphere a tinge of perspective. The feeling was enhanced by the lighting, or lack of it. Since this area of the ship, although by far the largest, was rarely visited except upon arriving or departing a cargo stop, the lighting was kept to a minimum. Even so it would have been lost in the cargo compartment of one of the great “Soaring Sun” class freighters.
They had no trouble locating the correct branch-way at the end nexus of the main one. It was the only strand headed remotely in the required direction. Tse-Mallory launched himself upward and began to float up to the rope. He reached out and began to pull himself rapidly upward, hand over hand. Truzenzuzex, he knew, would be right behind him. With its four hands the insect could go faster than he, but there was no reason for him to pass Bran since he couldn’t operate the human-contoured gun nearly as well.
They reached the gun housing, a sphere of thick metal like a blister in the skin of the ship. It had its own emergency power and air supply. Far off to both sides he could see where the mounting’s powered belt encircled the skin of the vessel. Moving along that belt the gun could cover an approaching threat from any angle. He had only a second to wonder what it was doing on a private yacht before he was inside the shell and buckling himself into the gunseat. Truzenzuzex secured the hatch behind them, moving to the computer imageouts to Bran’s left. A more modern weapon would have had both combined in a single helmet-set that would fit down over the gunner’s head. The insect began to cannibalize braces, locks, and belts from the emergency compartments, until he had built himself a reasonably solid harness opposite the ‘puter.
Bran wrapped his right hand around the pressure trigger with all the fondness of a proud father caressing his newborn. His left went into the battlescreen sensory pickup. He let go of the trigger for a moment, reluctantly, to tighten the nerve sensors around his spread left hand. He flexed it once to make sure the pickups didn’t pinch and then returned the right to the trigger grip. Next began a careful examination of the screen and dial scopes. It was definitely an early model, but then laser weapons hadn’t changed much in their basic design for several centuries, and probably wouldn’t in several more. The base design was too cheap and efficient. He had no doubt that he could operate this one effectively on the first try. Come to that, he’d damn well have to! Their pursuers weren’t likely to give them a practice shot.
Under impulses from his left hand the battlescreen lit. He was gratified to see that his combat reflexes, at least, were still operative. On the screens were two dots the size of his thumbnail. For a moment he almost panicked, thinking he was back on the old Twenty-Five. If an opposing ship had managed to approach this close in a war situation they’d have been vaporized by now. But then, this wasn’t a war situation. At least not yet. He put that unpleasant line of thought out of his mind. Something for the diplomats to sharpen their tongues on. Obviously neither of the approaching ships had expectations of meeting even token resistance. It was simply a game of catch-up. They came on openly and without caution. Possibly, hopefully, they also had their screens down or at least underpowered.
From his left Truzenzuzex began rattling off a stream of figures and coordinates. One of the destroyers was slightly nearer than the other. The sloppy formation was the inevitable result of overconfidence on the enemy’s part. Bran began lining up a center shot. His finger hesitated over the trigger, and he spoke into the intership mike.
“Look, Malaika. These people are here af
ter something, and since we’ve only got one something worth risking an interstellar incident over, they’re going to want us in one piece. I don’t expect them to start any reckless shooting. They’re coming in as if all they expect to have to do is net us like a clipped Geech bird. I’ve played with the AAnn before. They’re not overimaginative, but they think damn fast. That means one good shot and one only, and then we’d better run like hell. How close can you let them get while still giving us an outside chance to break their detection? Assuming they’ll be sufficiently confused to let us.”
Malaika calculated rapidly in his head. “Um . . . um . . . mara kwa mara . . . that Riidi fellow will have to decide whether to blow us to atoms or make another try . . . the latter, I don’t doubt . . . has to take us alive, or not at all . . . I can give you another two mils distance. La, one and a half, now.”
“Good enough,” said Tse-Mallory concentrating on the screen. It would have to be, he thought. “We’ll know it back here when the ‘puter hits it.” Malaika didn’t reply.
“That will bring us down almost to . . . to three,” said Truzenzuzex.
“I supposed. Let me know when we reach three point one.”
“Time enough?”
Tse-Mallory grinned. “Ole bug-wug, me friend, my reflexes have slowed down through the years, but dead yet they ain’t! It’ll be enough. Up the universe!”
“Up the universe!” came the even reply.
In Control, Malaika turned to Wolf, his face thoughtful.
“You heard?”
The shadow-man nodded.
“All right then. Start slowing down. Yes, slowing down! If he says he’s going to get only one shot, he’s probably going to get only one shot, and I want him to have as good a line as possible. So let’s make it look nearly as we can as though we’re giving up the chase.”
Obediently, Wolf began cutting their speed. Slowly, but the AAnn computers would notice it.