The SF Hall of Fame Volume Two B (54 page)

He gave it up, for the time being.

"I guess I'll have to take you home next," he
said; and they agreed.

Karres, it developed, was in the Iverdahl System. He
couldn't find any planet of that designation listed in his maps of the area,
but that meant nothing. The maps were old and often inaccurate, and local names
changed a lot.

Barring the use of weird and deadly miracle-drives, that
detour was going to cost him almost a month in time—and a good chunk of his
profits in power used up. The jewels Goth had illegally teleported must, of
course, be returned to their owner, he explained. He'd intended to look
severely at the culprit at that point; but she'd meant well, after all! They
were extremely peculiar children, but still children—they couldn't really
understand.

He would stop off en route to Karres at an Empire planet
with banking facilities to take care of that matter, the captain added. A
planet far enough off so the police wouldn't be likely to take any particular
interest in the
Venture.

A dead silence greeted this schedule. It appeared that the
representatives of Karres did not think much of his logic.

"Well," Maleen sighed at last, "we'll see you
get your money back some other way then!"

The junior witches nodded coldly.

"How did you three happen to get into this fix?"
the captain inquired, with the intention of changing the subject.

They'd left Karres together on a jaunt of their own, they
explained. No, they hadn't run away—he got the impression that such trips were
standard procedure for juveniles in that place. They were on another planet, a
civilized one but beyond the borders and law of Empire, when the town they were
in was raided by a small fleet of slavers. They were taken along with most of
the local youngsters.

"It's a wonder," he said reflectively, "you
didn't take over the ship."

"Oh, brother!" exclaimed the Leewit.

"Not that ship!" said Goth.

"That was an Imperial Slaver!" Maleen informed
him. "You behave yourself every second on those crates."

Just the same, the captain thought as he settled himself to
rest in the control room on a couch he had set up there, it was no longer
surprising that the Empire wanted no young slaves from Karres to be transported
into the interior! Oddest sort of children—But he ought to be able to get his
expenses paid by their relatives. Something very profitable might even be made
of this deal-Have to watch the record-entries though! Nikkeldepain's laws were
explicit about the penalties invoked by anything resembling the purchase and
sale of slaves.

He'd thoughtfully left the intership communicator adjusted
so he could listen in on their conversation in the captain's cabin. However,
there had been nothing for some time beyond frequent bursts of childish
giggling. Then came a succession of piercing shrieks from the Leewit. It
appeared she was being forcibly washed behind the ears by Maleen and obliged to
brush her teeth, in preparation for bedtime.

It had been agreed that he was not to enter the cabin,
because— for reasons not given—they couldn't keep the Sheewash Drive on in his
presence; and they wanted to have it ready, in case of an emergency. Piracy was
rife beyond the Imperial borders, and the
Venture
would keep beyond the
border for a good part of the trip, to avoid the more pressing danger of police
pursuit instigated by Porlumma. The captain had explained the potentialities of
the nova guns the
Venture
boasted, or tried to. Possibly, they hadn't
understood. At any rate, they seemed unimpressed.

The Sheewash Drive! Boy, he thought in sudden excitement, if
he could just get the principles of that. Maybe he would!

He raised his head suddenly. The Leewit's voice had lifted
clearly over the communicator:

". . .not such a bad old dope!" the childish
treble remarked.

The captain blinked indignantly.

"He's not so old," Maleen's soft voice returned.
"And he's certainly no dope!"

He smiled. Good kid, Maleen.

"Yeah, yeah!" squeaked the Leewit offensively.
"Maleen's sweet onthuulp!"

A vague commotion continued for a while, indicating, he
hoped, that someone he could mention was being smothered under a pillow.

He drifted off to sleep before it was settled.

If you didn't happen to be thinking of what they'd done,
they seemed more or less like normal children. Right from the start, they
displayed a flattering interest in the captain and his background; and he told
them all all about everything and everybody in Nikkeldepain. Finally, he even
showed them his treasured pocket-sized picture of Illyla—the one with which
he'd held many cozy conversations during the earlier part of his trip.

Almost at once, though, he realized that was a mistake. They
studied it intently in silence, their heads crowded close together.

"Oh, brother!" the Leewit whispered then, with
entirely the wrong kind of inflection.

"Just what did you mean by that?" the captain
inquired coldly.

"Sweet!" murmured Goth. But it was the way she
closed her eyes briefly, as though gripped by a light spasm of nausea.

"Shut up, Goth!" Maleen said sharply. "I
think she's very swee . . . I mean, she looks very nice!" she told the
captain.

The captain was disgruntled. Silently, he retrieved the
maligned Illyla and returned her to his breast pocket. Silently, he went off
and left them standing there.

But afterwards, in private, he took it out again and studied
it worriedly. His Illyla! He shifted the picture back and forth under the
light. It wasn't really a very good picture of her, he decided. It had been
bungled! From certain angles, one might even say that Illyla did look the least
bit insipid.

What was he thinking, he thought, shocked.

He unlimbered the nova gun turrets next and got in a little
firing practice. They had been sealed when he took over the
Venture
and
weren't supposed to be used, except in absolute emergencies. They were somewhat
uncertain weapons, though very effective, and Nik-keldepain had turned to safer
forms of armament many decades ago. But on the third day out from Nikkeldepain,
the captain made a brief notation in his log:

"Attacked by two pirate craft. Unsealed nova guns.
Destroyed one attacker; survivor fled—"

He was rather pleased by that crisp, hard-bitten description
of desperate space-adventure, and enjoyed rereading it occasionally. It wasn't
true, though. He had put in an interesting four hours at the time pursuing and
annihilating large, craggy chunks of substance of a meteorite-cloud he found
the
Venture
plowing through. Those nova guns were fascinating stuff!
You'd sight the turrets on something; and so long as it didn't move after that,
it was all right. If it did move, it got it—unless you relented and deflected
the turrets first. They were just the thing for arresting a pirate in midspace.

The
Venture
dipped back into the Empire's borders
four days later and headed for the capitol of the local province. Police ships
challenged them twice on the way in; and the captain found considerable comfort
in the awareness that his passengers foregathered silently in their cabin on
these occasions. They didn't tell him they were set to use the Sheewash
Drive—somehow it had never been mentioned since that first day; but he knew the
queer orange fire was circling over its skimpy framework of twisted wires there
and ready to act.

However, the space police waved him on, satisfied with
routine identification. Apparently, the
Venture
had not become generally
known as a criminal ship, to date.

Maleen accompanied him to the banking institution that was
to return Wansing's property to Porlumma. Her sisters, at the captain's
definite request, remained on the ship.

The transaction itself went off without a visible hitch. The
jewels would reach their destination in Porlumma within a month. But he had to
take out a staggering sum in insurance—"Piracy, thieves!" smiled the
clerk. "Even summary capital punishment won't keep the rats down."
And, of course, he had to register name, ship, home planet, and so on. But
since they already had all that information in Porlumma, he gave it without
hesitation.

On the way back to the spaceport, he sent off a sealed
message by radio-relay to the bereaved jeweler, informing him of the action
taken, and regretting the misunderstanding.

He felt a little better after that, though the insurance
payment had been a severe blow! If he didn't manage to work out a decent profit
on Karres somehow, the losses on the miffel farm would hardly be covered now.

Then he noticed that Maleen was getting uneasy.

"We'd better hurry!" was all she would say,
however. Her face grew pale.

The captain understood. She was having another premonition!
The hitch to this premoting business was, apparently, that when something was
brewing you were informed of the bare fact but had to guess at most of the
details. They grabbed an aircab and raced back to the spaceport.

They had just been cleared there when he spotted a small
group of uniformed men coming along the dock on the double. They stopped short
and then scattered, as the
Venture
lurched drunkenly sideways into the
air. Everyone else in sight was scattering, too.

That was a very bad take-off—one of the captain's worst!
Once afloat, however, he ran the ship promptly into the nightside of the planet
and turned her nose towards the border. The old pirate-chaser had plenty of
speed when you gave her the reins; and throughout the entire next sleep-period,
he let her use it all.

The Sheewash Drive was not required that time.

Next day, he had a lengthy private talk with Goth on the
Golden Rule and the Law, with particular reference to individual property
rights. If Councilor Onswud had been monitoring the sentiments expressed by the
captain, he could not have failed to rumble surprised approval. The delinquent
herself listened impassively; but the captain fancied she showed distinct signs
of being rather impressed by his earnestness.

It was two days after that—well beyond the borders
again—when they were obliged to make an unscheduled stop at a mining moon. For
the captain discovered he had already miscalculated the extent to which the
prolonged run on overdrive after leaving the capitol was going to deplete the
Venture's
reserves. They would have to juice up—

A large, extremely handsome Sirian freighter lay beside them
at the Moon station. It was half a battlecraft really, since it dealt regularly
beyond the borders. They had to wait while it was being serviced; and it took a
long time. The Sirians turned out to be as unpleasant as their ship was
good-looking—a snooty, conceited, hairy lot who talked only their own dialect
and pretended to be unfamiliar with Imperial Universum.

The captain found himself getting irked by their bad
manners—particularly when he discovered they were laughing over his argument
with the service superintendent about the cost of repowering the
Venture.

"You're out in deep space, captain!" said the
superintendent. "And you haven't juice enough left even to travel back to
the Border. You can't expect Imperial prices here!"

"It's not what you charged
them!"
The
captain angrily jerked his thumb at the Sirian.

"Regular customers!" the superintendent shrugged.
"You start coming by here every three months like they do, and we can make
an arrangement with you, too."

It was outrageous—it actually put the
Venture
back in
the red! But there was no help for it.

Nor did it improve the captain's temper when he muffed the
takeoff once more—and then had to watch the Sirian floating into space, as
sedately as a swan, a little behind him!

An hour later, as he sat glumly before the controls,
debating the chance of recouping his losses before returning to Nikkeldepain,
Maleen and the Leewit hurriedly entered the room. They did something to a port
screen.

"They sure are!" the Leewit exclaimed. She seemed
childishly pleased.

"Are what?" the captain inquired absently.

"Following us," said Maleen. She did not sound
pleased. "It's that Sirian ship, Captain Pausert—"

The captain stared bewilderedly at the screen. There
was
a
ship in focus there. It was quite obviously the Sirian and, just as obviously,
it was following them.

"What do they want?" he wondered. "They're
stinkers but they're not pirates. Even if they were, they wouldn't spend an
hour running after a crate like the
Venture!"

Maleen said nothing. The Leewit observed: "Oh, brother!
Got their bow-turrets out now—better get those nova guns ready!"

"But it's all nonsense!" the captain said,
flushing angrily. He turned suddenly towards the communicators. "What's
that Empire general beam-length?"

".0044," said Maleen.

A roaring, abusive voice flooded the control room immediately.
The one word understandable to the captain was
"Venture."
It
was repeated frequently, sometimes as if it were a question.

"Sirian!" said the captain. "Can you
understand them?" he asked Maleen.

She shook her head. "The Leewit can—"

The Leewit nodded, her gray eyes glistening.

"What are they saying?"

"They says you're for stopping," the Leewit
translated rapidly, but apparently retaining much of the original
sentence-structure. "They says you're for skinning alive ... ha! They says
you're for stopping right now and for only hanging. They says—"

Maleen scuttled from the control room. The Leewit banged the
communicator with one small fist.

"Beak-Wock!" she shrieked. It sounded like that,
anyway. The loud voice paused a moment.