“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.
The superintendent shrugged. “Regular customers. 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 take-off once more; and then had to watch the Sirian floating into space, as sedately as a swan, a little behind him.
TWO
AN HOUR LATER, as he sat glumly at the controls, debating the chances 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.”
The Leewit observed, “Got their bow turrets out now! Better get those nova guns ready!”
“But it’s all nonsense!” the captain said, flushing angrily. He turned towards the communicators. “What’s that Sirian general beam length?”
“Point zero zero four four,” said Maleen.
A roaring, abusive voice flooded the control room immediately. The one word understandable to the captain was “Venture.” It was repeated frequently.
“Sirian,” said the captain. “Can you understand them?” he asked Maleen.
She shook her head. “The Leewit can.” The Leewit nodded, gray eyes glistening.
“What are they saying?”
“They says you’re for stopping,” the Leewit translated rapidly, apparently retaining some of the original sentence structure. “They says you’re for skinning alive… ha! They says you’re 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 shrilled. It sounded like that anyway. The loud voice paused a moment.
“BEAK-Wock?” it returned in an aggrieved, startled tone.
“Beak-Wock!” the Leewit affirmed with apparent delight. She rattled off a string of similar-sounding syllables.
A howl of inarticulate wrath responded. The captain, in a whirl of outraged emotions, was yelling at the Leewit to shut up, at the Sirian to go to Great Patham’s Second Hell-the worst- and wrestling with the nova gun adjusters at the same time. He’d had about enough! He’d-
SSS whoosh!
It was the Sheewash Drive.
“And where are we now?” the captain inquired, in a voice of unnatural calm.
“Same place, just about,” the Leewit told him. “Ship’s still on the screen. Way back though-take them an hour again to catch up.” She seemed disappointed; then brightened. “You got lots of time to get the guns ready….”
The captain didn’t answer. He was marching down the passage towards the rear of the Venture. He passed the captain’s cabin and noted the door was shut. He went on without pausing. He was mad clean through-he knew what had happened! After all he’d told her, Goth had teleported again. It was all there, in the storage. Items of up to a pound in weight seemed as much as she could handle. But amazing quantities of stuff had met that one requirement-bottles filled with what might be perfume or liquor or dope, expensive-looking garments and cloths in a shining variety of colors, small boxes, odds, ends, and, of course, jewelry…
He spent half an hour getting it loaded into a steel space crate. He wheeled the crate into the big storage lock, sealed the inside lock door and pulled the switch that activated the automatic launching device.
The outer lock door slammed shut. He stalked back to the control room. The Leewit was still in charge, fiddling with the communicators.
“I could try a whistle over them,” she suggested, glancing up. She added, “But they’d bust somewheres, sure.”
“Get them on again!” the captain said.
“Yes, sir,” said the Leewit, surprised. The roaring voice came back faintly.
“SHUT UP!” the captain shouted in Imperial Universum. The voice shut up.
“Tell them they can pick up their stuff-it’s been dumped out in a crate,” the captain instructed the Leewit. “Tell them I’m proceeding on my course. Tell them if they follow me one light-minute beyond that crate, I’ll come back for them, shoot their front end off, shoot their rear end off, and ram ‘em in the middle.”
“Yes, SIR!” the Leewit sparkled.
They proceeded on their course. Nobody followed.
“Now I want to speak to Goth,” the captain announced. He was still at a high boil. “Privately,” he added. “Back in the storage-“
Goth followed him expressionlessly into the storage. He closed the door to the passage. He’d broken off a two-foot length from the tip of one of Councilor Rapport’s over-priced tinklewood fishing poles. It made a fair switch.
But Goth looked terribly small just now! He cleared his throat. He wished for a moment he was back on Nikkeldepain. “I warned you,” he said. Goth didn’t move. Between one second and the next, however, she seemed to grow remarkably. Her brown eyes focused on the captain’s Adam’s apple; her lip lifted at one side. A slightly hungry look came into her face.
“Wouldn’t try that!” she murmured. Mad again, the captain reached out quickly and got a handful of leathery cloth. There was a blur of motion, and what felt like a small explosion against his left kneecap. He grunted with anguished surprise and fell back on a bale of Councilor Rapport’s all-weather cloaks. But he had retained his grip-Goth fell half on top of him, and that was still a favorable position.
Then her head snaked around, her neck seemed to extend itself, and her teeth snapped his wrist. Weasels don’t let go-
“Didn’t think he’d have the nerve!” Goth’s voice came over the intercom. There was a note of grudging admiration in it. It seemed she was inspecting her bruises. All tangled up in the job of bandaging his freely bleeding wrist, the captain hoped she’d find a good plenty to count. His knee felt the size of a sofa pillow and throbbed like a piston engine.
“The captain is a brave man,” Maleen was saying reproachfully. “You should have known better.”
“He’s not very smart, though!” the Leewit remarked suggestively. There was a short silence. “Is he? Goth? Eh?” the Leewit urged.
“You two lay off him!” Maleen ordered. “Unless,” she added meaningfully, “you want to swim back to Karres-on the Egger Route!”
“Not me,” the Leewit said briefly.
“You could do it, I guess,” said Goth. She seemed to be reflecting. “All right-we’ll lay off him. It was a fair fight, anyway.”
They raised Karres the sixteenth day after leaving Porlumma. There had been no more incidents; but then, neither had there been any more stops or other contacts with the defenseless Empire. Maleen had cooked up a poultice which did wonders for his knee. With the end of the trip in sight, all tensions relaxed; and Maleen, at least, seemed to grow hourly more regretful at the prospect of parting. After a brief study Karres could be distinguished easily enough by the fact that it moved counterclockwise to all the other planets of the Iverdahl System.
Well, it would, the captain thought. They came soaring into its atmosphere on the dayside without arousing any detectable interest. No communicator signals reached them, and no other ships showed up to look them over. Karres, in fact, had the appearance of a completely uninhabited world. There were a large number of seas, too big to be called lakes and too small to be oceans, scattered over its surface. There was one enormously towering ridge of mountains, which ran from pole to pole, and any number of lesser chains. There were two good-sized ice caps; and the southern section of the planet was speckled with intermittent stretches of snow. Almost all of it seemed to be dense forest. It was a handsome place, in a wild, somber way. They went gliding over it, from noon through morning and into the dawn fringe-the captain at the controls, Goth and the Leewit flanking him at the screens and Maleen behind him to do the directing. After a few initial squeals the Leewit became oddly silent. Suddenly the captain realized she was blubbering.
Somehow it startled him to discover that her homecoming had affected the Leewit to that extent. He felt Goth reach out behind him and put her hand on the Leewit’s shoulder. The smallest witch sniffled happily.