It was a somewhat different matter with the other items, but it came out to much the same thing. The significant ingredients of the liquor, jellies, and perfume essences could be grown only in three limited areas of three different Empire planets, and in such limited quantities there that the finished products hardly ever appeared on the regular market. The witches didn’t advertise the fact that they’d worked out ways to produce all three on Karres. Klatha apparently could also be used to assist a green thumb….
“That might be worth a great deal more than we’ve calculated on, then!” the captain said hopefully.
“Might,” Goth agreed. “Don’t know what they’ll pay for it here, though.”
They found out during their next appointment, which was with a dignitary of the Daal’s Bank. This gentleman already had the appraiser’s report on hand and had opened an account for Captain Aron of Mulm on the strength of it. He went over their planned schedule on Uldune with them, added up the fees, licenses, and taxes that applied to such activities, threw in a figure to cover general expenses involved with getting the Venture, renamed Evening Bird, operating under a fictitious Mulm charter established as a trading ship, and deducted the whole from the anticipated bid value of the cargo, which allowed for the customary forty per cent risk cut on the appraised real value. In this instance the bidding might run higher. What they’d have left in cash in any case came to slightly less than half a million Imperial maels, and they could begin drawing on the bank immediately for anything up to that sum.
He’d counted on reimbursing Councilor Onswud via a nontraceable subradio deposit for the estimated value of the Venture, the Venture’s original Nikkeldepain cargo, and the miffel farm loan, plus interest. And on investing up to a hundred and fifty thousand in having the Venture re-equipped with what it took to make her dependably spaceworthy. It had looked as if they’d be living rather hand-to-mouth after that until they’d put a couple of profitable trading runs behind them.
Now, leaving themselves only a reasonable margin in case general expenses ran higher than the bank’s estimate, they could, if they chose, sink nearly four hundred thousand into the Venture. That should be enough to modernize her from stem to stem, turn her into a ship that carried passengers in comfort as well as cargo, a ship furthermore equal to the best in her class for speed, security, and navigational equipment, capable of running rings around the average bandit or slipping away if necessary from a nosy Imperial patrol. All that without having to fall back on the Sheewash Drive, which still would be available to them when required.
There hadn’t been a good opportunity today to discuss that notion with Goth. But Goth would like it. As for himself. ..
The captain shook his head, realizing he’d already made up his mind. He smiled out over the balcony railing at dark Zergandol. After all, what better use could they make of the money? Tomorrow they’d get down to business with Sunnat, Bazim & Filish!
He placed the empty coffee mug on a window ledge beside the chair he’d settled himself in and stretched out his legs. There was a chill in the air now and it had begun to get, through to him, but he still wasn’t quite ready to turn in. If someone had told him even a month ago that he’d find himself one day on blood-stained old Uldune….
They’d varnished over their evil now, but there was evil enough still here. As far as the Daal’s Bank knew, he’d committed piracy and murder to get his hands on the rare cargo they’d taken on consignment from him. And if anything, they respected him for it.
In spite of the Daal’s rigid, limitations on what was allowable nowadays, they weren’t really far away from the previous bad pirate period. In the big store where he and Goth had picked up supplies for the house, the floor manager earnestly advised them to invest in adequate spy-proofing equipment. The captain hadn’t seen much point to it until Goth gave him the sign. The device they settled on then was small though expensive, looked like a pocket watch. Activated, it was guaranteed to make a twenty-foot sphere of space impervious to ordinary eavesdroppers, instrument snooping, hidden observers, and lip-readers. They checked it out with the store’s most sophisticated espionage instruments and bought it. There’d be occasions enough at that when they’d want to be talking about things nobody here should know about; and apparently no one on the planet was really safe from prying eyes and ears unless they had such protection.
In the open space about Uldune, of course, the old wickedness flourished openly. During the day, he’d heard occasional references to a report that ships of a notorious modern-day pirate leader, called the Agandar, had cleaned out a platinum mining settlement on an asteroid chain close enough to Uldune to keep the Daal’s space defense forces on red alert overnight….
The captain’s eyes shifted to the sky. Low over the western horizon hung the twisted purple glow of the Sea of Light, as familiar to him by now as any of the galactic landmarks in the night skies of Nikkeldepain. He watched it a few minutes. It was like a challenge, a cold threat; and something in him seemed to reply to it:
Wait till we’re ready for you….
About it lay the Chaladoor. Another ill-omened name out of history, out of legend … a vast expanse of space beginning some two days’ travel beyond Uldune, with a reputation still as bad as it ever had been in the distant past. Very little shipping moved in that direction, although barely half a month away, on the far side of the Chaladoor, there were clusters of prosperous independent worlds wide open for profitable trade. They could be reached by circumnavigating the Chaladoor, but that trip took the better part of a year. The direct route, on the other hand, meant threading one’s way through a maze of navigational hazards, hazards to an ordinary kind of ship such as to discourage all but the hardiest. Inimical beings, like the crew of the Megair highwayman which had stalked the Venture during the run to Uldune, were a part of the hazards. And other forces were at work there, disturbing and sometimes violently dangerous forces nobody professed to understand. Even the almost universally functioning subradio did not operate in that area.
Nevertheless there was a constant demand for commercial transportation through the Chaladoor, the time saved by using the direct route outweighing the risks. And the passage wasn’t impossible. Certain routes were known to be relatively free of problems. Small, fast, well-armed ships stood the best chance of traversing the Chaladoor successfully along them, and one or two runs of that kind could net a ship owner as much as several years of ordinary trading.
More importantly, from the captain’s and Goth’s point of view, Karres ships, while they carefully avoided certain sections of the Chaladoor, crossed it as a matter of course whenever it lay along their route. Constant alertness was required. Then the Sheewash Drive simply took them out of any serious trouble they encountered….
What it meant was that the remodeled, rejuvenated Venture also could make that run.
The captain settled deeper into the chair, blinking drowsily at the bubble of light over the spaceport, which seemed the one area still awake in Zergandcl. Afterwards, he couldn’t have said at what point his reflections turned into dream-thoughts. But he did begin to dream.
It was a vague, half-sleep dreaming, agreeable to start with. Then, by imperceptible degrees, uneasiness came creeping into it, a dim apprehension which strengthened and ebbed but never quite faded. Later he recalled nothing more definite about that part of it, but considerable time must have passed in that way.
Then the vague, shifting dream imagery gathered, took on form and definite menace. He was aware of color at first, a spreading yellow glow, a sense of something far away but drawing closer. it became a fog of yellow light, growing towards him. A humming came from it.
Fear awoke in him. He didn’t know of what until he discovered the fog wasn’t empty. There were brighter ripplings and flashes within it, a seething of energies. These energies seemed to form linked networks inside the cloud. At the points where they crossed were bodies.
It would have been difficult to describe those bodies in any detail. They seemed made of light themselves, silhouettes of dim fire in the yellow haze of the cloud. They were like fat worms which moved with a slow writhing; and he had the impression that they were not only alive but aware and alert; also that in some manner they were manipulating the glowing fog and its energies.
What alarmed him was that this mysterious structure was moving steadily closer. If he didn’t do something he would be engulfed by it.