“There will be no problem,” said Alen.
Blackbeard grunted and trod fiercely on the accelerator.
“That’s my ship,” he said at length. “Starsong. Vegan registry—it may help passing through Eyolf’s Realm, though it cost me overmuch in bribes. A crew of eight, lazy, good-for-nothing wastrels—Agh! Can I believe my eyes?” The car jammed to a halt before the looming ship and blackbeard was up the ladder and through the port in a second. Settling his robes, Alen followed,.
He found the trader fiercely denouncing his chief engineer for using space drive to heat the ship; he had seen the faint haze of a minimum exhaust from the stern tubes.
“For that, dolt,’4 screamed blackbeard, “we have a thing known as electricity. Have you by chance ever heard of it? Are you aware that a chief engineer’s responsibility is the efficient and economical operation of his ship’s drive mechanism?”
The chief, a cowed-looking Cephean, saw Alen with relief and swept off his battered cap. The Herald nodded gravely and the trader broke off in irritation. “We need none of that bowing and scraping for the rest of the voyage,” he declared.
“Of course not, sir,” said the chief. “O’course not. I was just welcoming the Herald aboard. Welcome aboard, Herald. I’m Chief Elwon, Herald. And I’m glad to have a Herald with us.” A covert glance at the trader. “I’ve voyaged with Heralds and without, and I don’t mind saying I feel safer indeed with you aboard.”
“May I be taken to my quarters?” asked Alen.
“Your—?” began the trader, stupefied.
The chief broke hi; “I’ll fix you a cabin, Herald. We’ve got some bulkheads I can rig aft for a snug little space, not roomy, but the best a little ship like this can afford.”
The trader collapsed into a Ducket seat as the chief bustled aft and Alen followed.
“Herald,” the chief said with some embarrassment after he had collared two crewmen and set them to work, “you’ll have to excuse our good master trader. He’s new to the interstar
lanes and he doesn’t exactly know the jets yet. Between us we’ll get him squared away.”
Alen inspected the cubicle run up for him—a satisfactory enclosure affording him the decent privacy he rated. He dismissed the chief and the crewmen with a nod and settled himself on the cot.
Beneath the iron composure in which he had been trained, he felt scared and alone. Not even old Machiavelli seemed to offer comfort or council: “There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or, more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things,” said Chapter Six.
But what said Chapter Twenty-Six? “Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great.”
Starsong was not a happy ship. Blackbeard’s nagging stinginess hung over the crew like a thundercloud, but Alen professed not to notice. He walked regularly fore and aft for two hours a day greeting the crew members in their various native tongues and then wrapping himself in the reserve the Order demanded—though he longed to salute them man-toman, eat with them, gossip about their native planets, the past misdeeds that had brought them to their berths aboard the miserly Starsong, their hopes for the future. The Rule of the College and Order of Heralds decreed otherwise. He accepted the uncoverings of the crew with a nod and tried to be pleased because they stood in growing awe of him that ranged from Chief Elwon’s Hvely appreciation of a Herald’s skill to Wiper Jukkl’s superstitious reverence. Jukkl was a low-browed specimen from a planet of the decadent Sirius system. He outdid the normal slovenliness of an all-male crew on a freighter
—a slovenliness in which Alen could not share. Many of his waking hours were spent in his locked cubicle burnishing his metal and cleaning and pressing his robes. A Herald was never supposed to suggest by his appearance that he shared moral frailties.
Blackbeard himself yielded a little, to the point of touching his cap sullenly. This probably was not so much awe at Alen’s studied manner as respect for the incisive, lightning-fast job of auditing the Herald did on the books of the trading venture