“Indeed, we’ll give you enough slash that your whole village can drink yourselves into a stupor,” Daniel said, continuing to walk forward till he and Adele were only six feet from the brush. “But we’ll do that as we’re leaving, sir, so there won’t be any awkwardness. Though—if you’re the chief of your village, we’d be more than happy to offer you a taste of something now.”
Even this close, Adele couldn’t see the five other natives Tovera had mentioned. Well, Tovera would be at a loss to find a snatch of pre-Hiatus poetry.
Adele consciously avoided a grimace. Slash, homemade liquor, was as much a part of star travel as Casimir radiation; and equally necessary, many spacers would’ve claimed. Anything organic can be fermented; anything fermented can be distilled into liquor strong enough that you might be able to get drunk before nausea emptied your gorge.
Adele had never found an attraction in numbing her mind, and if she had she’d still have been unwilling to use slash for the purpose. In this, however, she realized she was in the minority of those aboard the Princess Cecile.
The native hesitated, his eyes flickering to his left. Another man, of similar build but much older, rose from a twisted bush close enough for Adele to have touched him. Four more men of intermediate age stood up also; it was as if they’d coalesced out of thin air.
“I am the Captain!” said the oldest native emphatically. The flint point of his spear was bound to the shaft with copper wire, the only metal Adele saw among the six of them. “He’s only the Purser, and that because the Lieutenant died yesterday and the Purser was promoted to Engineer. You must give me the slash.”
A burly man, stocky only in comparison with his fellows, nodded enthusiastically. In addition to his spear, he carried a stone axe whose head with a little imagination resembled an adjustable wrench.
“Indeed we will, Captain,” said Daniel, his voice formally portentous. “For you, and some for your officers too. Then—”
He paused, smiling broadly.
“—we’d be pleased to have you accompany us on a visit to the wrecked ship nearby.”
He gestured toward the Princess Cecile, bowed to the Captain, and turned. As he started back with Adele beside him, Daniel whispered, “Because if he’s with us, I’ll worry less about his friends suddenly deciding that they might get their slash quicker if they grabbed some of us for ransom.”
CHAPTER 18
“Captain Leary?” said the Count, shuffling down the boarding bridge between a pair of riggers. He’d changed clothes after he’d slipped off the bridge earlier. The shock seemed to have sobered him as well—he’d been sampling the slash with the village officers—but it hadn’t done anything positive for his state of mind. “When we come back I order you, I order you, to move the ship to dry ground. Do you understand?”
“Certainly, your excellency,” Daniel said, bowing from the waist. He turned to his lieutenant and continued, “Mr. Chewning, while I’m gone I want you to move the locals out of the way so that on my return I can shift the vessel to the clearing three hundred yards west of here. Don’t use any more force than you need to, but I don’t want to burn up half the village.”
Moving a starship overland on its plasma thrusters was a simple piece of shiphandling by comparison with coming down on full braking thrust and suddenly having to deal with reflections from a solid surface. The only real difficulty was that all the villagers were now clustered on shore beside the Princess Cecile. The corvette would incinerate everything it overflew at low altitude. Daniel figured forest fires were enough of a problem without having a couple hundred dead natives on his conscience as well.
“Can I give ’em a tot when I get ’em out of the way?” Chewning asked.
Daniel considered. The officers had had their treat, but he’d remained adamant than the ordinary villagers weren’t to have liquor until the Sissie was ready to lift off-planet again.
“Yes, of course,” he said. “But two ounces only and make sure they all drink their own share, Chewning. The locals don’t seem to have much of a head for liquor, and I’m afraid of what’ll happen if they get too much in them.”