Thorby heard Mata’s frightened gasp, but he was again at his problem. Change anything? Could he reach him? Could he still reach him in the cone of possible maneuver? Now! He armed Ms board and let the computer give the order, on projection.
He heard Jeri’s voice faintly; Jeri seemed to be talking very slowly. “Missile away. I think you got him . . . but you were eager. Get off another one before their beam hits us.”
Automatically Thorby complied. Time was too short to try another solution; he ordered the machine to send another missile according to projection. He then saw by his board that the target was no longer under power and decided with a curiously empty feeling that his first missile had destroyed it.
“That’s all!” Jeri announced. “Now!”
“What?”
“Who had it? You or me? Three desserts.”
“I had it,” Thorby said with certainty. In another level he decided that he would never really be a Trader — to Jeri that target had been — just fraki. Or three desserts.
“Wrong. That puts me three up. I turned coward and kept control myself. Of course the bombs were disarmed and the launchers locked as soon as the Captain gave the word . . . but I didn’t have the nerve to risk an accident with a friendly ship.”
“Friendly ship!”
“Of course. But for you, Assistant Junior Controlman, it was your first real one . . . as I intended.”
Thorby’s head floated. Mata said, “Bud, you’re mean to collect. You cheated.”
“Sure I cheated. But he’s a blooded controlman now, just the same. And I’m going to collect, just the very same. Ice cream tonight!”
Chapter 10
Thorby did not stay an assistant junior firecontrolman; Jeri moved up to astrogation trainee; Mata took charge of the starboard room, and Thorby was officially posted as the new Starboard Junior Firecontrolman, with life and death in his forefinger. He was not sure that he liked it.
Then that arrangement tumbled almost as quickly.
Losian is a “safe” planet. Inhabited by civilized non-humans, it is a port safe from ground raids; no dirtside defensive watches were necessary. Men could leave the ship for pleasure and even women could do so. (Some of the women aboard had not left the ship, save at Gatherings of the People, since being exchanged to Sisu as girls.)
Losian was to Thorby his “first” foreign land, Jubbul being the only planet clear in his memory. So he was very eager to see it. But work came first. When he was confirmed as a firecontrolman, he was transferred from hydroponics into the junior vacancy among the Supercargo’s clerks. It increased Thorby’s status; business carried more prestige than housekeeping. Theoretically he was now qualified to check cargo; in fact a senior clerk did that while Thorby sweated, along with junior male relatives from every department. Cargo was an all-hands operation, as Sisu never permitted stevedores inside, even if it meant paying for featherbedding.
The Losians have never invented tariff; crated bales of verga leaves were turned over to purchaser right outside the ship. In spite of blowers the hold reeked of their spicy, narcotic fragrance and reminded Thorby of months past and light-years away when he had huddled, a fugitive in danger of being shortened, into a hole in one crate while a friendly stranger smuggled him through the Sargon’s police.
It didn’t seem possible. Sisu was home. Even as he mused, he thought in the Family’s language.
He realized with sudden guilt that he had not thought about Pop very often lately. Was he forgetting Pop? No, no! He could never forget, not anything . . . Pop’s tones of voice, the detached look when he was about to comment unfavorably, his creaking movements on chilly mornings, his unfailing patience no matter what — why, in all those years Pop had never been angry with him — yes, he had, once.
” ‘I am not your master!’ ”
Pop had been angry that once. It had scared Thorby; he hadn’t understood.
Now, across long space and time, Thorby suddenly understood. Only one thing could make Pop angry: Pop had been explosively insulted at the assertion that Baslim the Cripple was master to a slave. Pop, who maintained that a wise man could not be insulted, since truth could not insult and untruth was not worthy of notice.