Derelict For Trade

15

" We’re just about out of funds," Frank Mura said, coming into the galley mess. "Another day and we’ll be dipping into the red."

Dane Thorson, sitting with Jasper and Rip in the corner, exchanged glances with his compatriots. Ali had said once, "When Frank’s upset he hides his hands behind his back." Frank stood in the hatchway, firmly anchored by his mag-boots, his countenance stolidly blank as ever, but neither hand was visible.

He wants us to leave Exchange.

Dane felt the thought impact his brain as if someone had spoken out loud. They were all three thinking the same thing, he knew.

"Can they cut off life support?" Mura went on.

Steen Wilcox shook his head. "No, they can’t—unless they want to risk breach of contract, and then our debt is nulled. The account is payable when we officially notify them of our blast time and they relinquish life support over to us."

Johan Stotz, who was sitting with a pocket comp next to his food, looked up and said, "But if we can’t pay our shot, then we get impounded before we can fire up the jets. Look, Chief, didn’t Ross tell you that the head of the trilateral Trade office, this Flindyk, is by-the-books, straight-beam honest? If so, why don’t we just go lay this in his lap?"

"Is Ross honest?" Wilcox countered.

"Good question," Kosti growled.

"I’ve yet to hear of any Patrol rankers being corrupt," Jellico said from his place between the jet man and the astrogator, "but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. As for Flindyk, I’ve tried three times to get an appointment with him, but his flunkies fall all over themselves relating how sorry they are to report his unending series of crises that prevent my getting on the schedule. As for Ross, he may not be corrupt, but I think he’s worthless."

Rael Cofort glanced up from her seat near the galley. Tau was taking his turn on the Starvenger, so she kept busy with a pocket comp as she ran through lab statistics. Her eyes narrowed, and she said, "I’ve only seen him twice, and that for a short time, but he didn’t seem the corrupt type. And believe me, I’ve encountered plenty of those. He was more. detached."

" ’Detached’ is a fine way of putting it," Van Ryke said, his mellow voice contemplative. "It seems odd for a Patrol type to stay so silent. I’d thought we’d get a warning after Karl’s and Ali’s little encounters, if nothing else."

Jellico laid his hand flat on the table. "We’ll go to Administrator of Trade Executed in Perfect Harmony Flindyk— and Captain-Legate

Ross—and demand a hearing when we have concrete proof. Until we know otherwise, we’ll assume that they are honest, and that the trouble is unknown to them. A few enterprising underlings hiding their activities from their authorities."

"I just hope our proof points to something," Wilcox said. "I don’t like how the clues, if you can call them that, seem completely unconnected."

"I just hope it’s soon," Mura said tightly. "It’d better be, or we’ll solve someone’s problem, just to end up with our own—in jail, for debt, or free of debt but no ship with which to blast out of here." With that he retreated into the galley.

Mura’s departure seemed to be the signal for a general breakup.

Wilcox and Stotz were ready to head down to the one-gee-level gym to work out. Jasper Weeks and Karl Kosti disappeared to engine territory and a project they had going for an upgrade to the macronuclear prefilters, based on some tech they’d discovered on the Starvenger. Rael Cofort moved toward the down-ladder, probably to wake up Tooe. Dane knew they were going back up to the Spinner, though he didn’t know why.

He also knew it was time for him to head down to the Shver territory and check the mail drop. His palms felt damp. He rubbed them down his trousers, then got up quickly. If he had to do it, best get it over with fast.

The maglev to the surface was nearly empty, though along the way it picked up more Shver, which was not surprising. Dane stayed motionless on his seat, not meeting anyone’s eyes directly, and no one molested him. He listened to the talk around him, figuring it was good practice. He rather liked the Shver voices. They sounded like a distant thunderstorm, only pleasingly resonant.

As the maglev sped toward the surface Dane looked out the windows at the gently curving landscape. This, he realized, was where Exchange really got the first part of its name—the Shver had made the inner surface of the habitat into a vast garden. Though there were farms everywhere, the trees, hills, streams, and rows of crops were pleasant to a human eye. If you ignored the up-curving horizon, it almost reminded a person of the unruined portions of Terra.

He was so fascinated he was scarcely aware of the steady increase in

gravity pull. They’d reached 1.0 grav while still well above the inner surface. Now, as they neared it, when he moved slightly there was the faintest drag on his joints, a little as if he had some kind of flu. His body felt heavy; he straightened up and accommodated his breathing in the way he’d been taught at Trade Pool years ago.

Heavy grav did not come much in his way. The cost of fuel—and added stresses on the ship—to land on and depart a heavy-grav planet was tremendous, and none of the crew liked the stress on their bodies. But the prospect of a good cargo would cause Free Traders to land anywhere, and Dane had paid attention to learning how to cope in this environment.

The maglev presently stopped at a Shver outpost. Their homes, of course, were well hidden by the forests of trees and cleverly designed hills. But the Shver outposts were nicely designed. Dane liked the huge proportions; it wasn’t often he entered a room whose ceiling and furnishings made him feel short.

Moving slowly, he stayed out of the way of the briskly marching Shver, and followed them inside. The air was heavily perfumed with scents from the surrounding plants and flowers, and it felt strange in his nose. He sneezed rapidly twice, which made his head ache. None of the Shver inside, standing at their workstations or conversing in small groups, even so much as looked up at the noise, which had sounded thunderous to Dane. Probably because the air was so dense, he decided—it was transmitting sounds more effectively to his ears.

The front area was for business of various sorts, and Dane passed a few humanoids, and even one Kanddoyd youth, who looked oddly compressed into his carapace.

Dane scrutinized the holographic signs, and recognized the sigils for "Communication." He passed through a high arching doorway into a smaller chamber. The com room was, he was glad to see, fully automated, just as Nunku had promised. He entered his ID, waited, and his heart started pounding when the computer screen indicated he had one e-letter waiting. He got it in print and chip form, paid in cash, zipped both the printout and the chip into his belt pouch, and left.

No one else had come in. No one paid any attention to him as he retreated to the maglev concourse. He restrained himself from touching the pouch until he was safely in a pod by himself. Then he pulled out the

printout and scanned it.

The first search field was "Solar Queen," and a listing had come almost promptly, Dane realized, as he looked at the header which gave the time the data had been found. It was within minutes after he had inserted the chip into the Jheel of Clan Golm’s system. The name was in a poorly protected security area in the Jheel’s own system, and the words were in Shver. Dane puzzled slowly at it, resorting to his belt translator once or twice until he had the gist of it: the Jheel of Clan Golm was ordered, by Prime Facilitator Koytatik, not to deal in any way with crew members of either the Solar Queen or the Starvenger. And the date in the sent order’s header was. Dane calculated rapidly, and realized with a flush of indignation that it had to be within scarce minutes after he and Rip had received the official registry claim on the derelict.

He went on to the second field, which was "Starvenger." This file was a very long one.

At first the words didn’t seem to add up to anything particularly nefarious or even exciting. It was merely a list of ships lost or abandoned whose quitclaims were duly registered through Trade. The list went back twenty-five years, and the number was a lot higher than Dane would have expected. How high would the number be if the list included those ships lost under mysterious circumstances and not claimed? Scanning rapidly, Dane was reminded yet again how dangerous was this life he had chosen, and he felt the danger weigh in his chest like the pull of the Shver’s gravity. But he thrust the misgiving away impatiently, knowing that if he were standing at Pool again, a raw teen fresh from the Home, he would still walk through those doors and ask for training.

He scanned the list again more slowly, and this time some of the components caught his attention. He saw two of Teague Cofort’s ships listed. He saw nearly all of one of the lesser-known Company lines, wiped out at once. Plague, he thought, and this time he didn’t bother to fight the shiver. All their vessels must have been infected, forcing them to jettison their entire line. Dane didn’t want to know what kind of plague would cause a Company to take such a drastic step.

He saw four I-S ships listed right around the time the Queen had first run into trouble with some Eysies. Had their attitude caused the problems, or had the problems caused the attitude? Interesting to speculate. He was so used to thinking of the big Companies as all-powerful, he hadn’t considered that they could still have problems of their own. He remembered what Dr. Cofort had said: even big Companies are made of human beings. An obvious statement—and easily forgotten.

Dane reached the bottom of the list, and with more difficulty tried to decode the cryptic abbreviations and signs that seemed to indicate the path Nunku’s ferret program had taken. Was this really important to anyone but computer techs? he wondered as he looked it over. The end point was Prime Facilitator Koytatik.

Was this a vector? Not really, he had to admit. It was probably well within her rights to have that data. As for the order, even that might be explained, if he and Rip, by trying to insist on contacting the old owners, had inadvertently violated some custom.

But if they had, why hadn’t the tapes indicated anything about that custom? He and Van Ryke had done a thorough reading during the dead time in hyper, and Dane knew he’d never seen any mention of this kind of custom.

He sighed, and looked at the last sheet, which was the search for "Ariadne." This flimsy was mostly blank, with a couple of lines of incomprehensible notations.

He was impatient for the long ride back to be over. Not even the gradual lightening of his body as they eased into low grav served to curb his impatience.

At last, though, he reached the end of the journey, and he bounded aboard the Queen. He found Jellico waiting, with Rip Shannon. Ya was still asleep, then.

He handed the printout to the captain, and the chip to Shannon, who dropped it into the converter Ya had rigged. A spool of quantumtape popped out, which Rip inserted into the comp.

Within seconds the screen showed pretty much what Dane had already read on the printout.

There was one difference.

When they reached the end, Rip pointed at the screen and said, "Unless

I’m totally wrong, what this means is that there are listings for the Ariadne, but they are protected behind heavily coded fire walls."

"Will Nunku’s ferret break through?"

Rip’s dark eyes were considering. "Tang says Nunku is, in her way, a master technician. I expect that, given time, her ferret will break the entire system."

"Given time," the captain repeated.

"Right," Rip said soberly. "These codes here, and here, are reporting having crossed telltale lines."

"Telltales," Dane said. "That means someone knows we’re in the system. Though apparently they don’t know where, or what we were after, or we’d have been caught by now."

"Right," Rip said again.

Rael Cofort ducked behind a serrated piece of some kind of equipment, peering through a cog hole.

She heard the faint hiss of static, followed by a voice distorted in the way sound is always distorted when amplified through a helmet com. The language was Shver, so the only word she was sure of was "intruder."

The Monitors sped by, the air they stirred smelling faintly of whatever fuel they burned in their gauntlet and ankle jets.

She waited, watching Tooe, who perched motionless behind a huge automated scooping mechanism. Tooe’s head was cocked at an uncomfortable angle, her crest flat. Presently the faintest whistle came echoing back, a low, flat note.

Tooe’s crest snapped up at a triumphant angle. "Safe!" she whispered. "Now we go."

And she catapulted herself from her perch and ricocheted from the jumble of abandoned farming tools until she had built up speed, then launched through a dark hole. Rael couldn’t see what was beyond it, but she launched herself after as hard as she could, her heart hammering in

her chest.

The lighting was extremely dim, but Rael got the impression they were crossing a vast space, which left them very vulnerable. She couldn’t see, but she knew there were beings who could—and who liked humans only as prey.

She gripped her sleeprod tightly in her left hand, and used her right for navigation as once again Tooe bounced at odd angles down another complicated transition area.

There were no more Monitors—or Spinner habitues. Guided by the whistles, Tooe brought Rael without further incident to the appointed meeting place. She’d hoped that a few of the other denizens of the area might come if she offered free medical care in trade for data.

What awaited her in the weird chamber designated a neutral area by the Spinner people made her stop in amazement.

Perched, lying, clinging, sitting, or curled up was a crowd so large Rael could not count them. No two heads were oriented in the same direction, nor were any of the furnishings— up was entirely a matter of personal choice. And since there were lighting fixtures everywhere, it was impossible to see anything clearly. Monstrous shadows clung to odd corners; elsewhere details washed out in a blaze of light. And the smells! Even her medical training hadn’t prepared her for the odor of many beings of radically different genetic backgrounds, in an environment that made washing difficult at best, and even fatal if carelessly approached.

Rael fought dizziness while she looked around, moving her head with painstaking slowness, but no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t impose any sense of order on the scene.

So don't try, she thought.

Slowly her vertigo left her; the falling sensation diminished, and she was able to assess her prospective patients. Now she was glad she’d brought the large pack; reflecting that she’d be traveling in null grav, which meant no weight, she’d hauled a good selection of medical supplies, intending to leave them with Nunku for future use. Now, she realized, she would probably use them up and still have people waiting.

She wished Tau was with her, as Tooe started talking in the local patois. Next time, if there was a next time, she’d have to bring him.

As Tooe described the conditions that she and Rael had agreed on earlier, Rael slowly unpacked her kit and set up a kind of clinic. Medicine in null grav, and for races not common to any of her medical books—this was going to be one for a paper, she thought, as the first person approached.

He was Terran, so he didn’t need a translator. His age could have been anywhere from fifty to eighty, she realized, looking at the gaunt face and sparse gray hair. Horrible purple blaster burns disfigured a good portion of the left side of his body. He came close, then eyed her, plainly hesitant to speak.

"You understood the terms?" she said gently. "I am not an authority, and have no permission from the Monitors or anyone else but my captain to be here. I don’t want your real name or any other details you don’t want to give. All I want to know is how you came to be here."

"I’ll tell you my name," he growled in a raspy voice that sounded painful to her ears. "Maybe someday I’ll get justice— or at least some answers. I’m Kellam Akortu, and I served aboard the Carthaginia from boy to man, and then on Lucky Lucy for nigh on thirty years. Free Traders, Doctor, like yourself." Rael realized the tattered garments the poor old man was wearing so proudly were the remains of a brown tunic and trousers. " Lucky Lucy had a run of bad luck there, back maybe ten, twelve years ago Standard. Old lanes runnin’ out of goods, big Companies gobbling up the new stuff. Three auctions we went to, we couldn’t even afford Class D planets. So Cap’n Aki says, we’re goin’ out to new frontiers, out here in Kanddoyd territory, where they are friendly with humans, and might think our stuff worth something."

"Here, just stretch out this way," Rael murmured. "I need to use the scanner to determine the best way to help you. Please, keep talking."

The man eased himself out flat before her; it was evident that even in free fall he moved bent and twisted to accommodate badly healed burns.

"Well, the cap’n was right. We got onto a hot thing. Planet the Shver had left, due to radiation on the surface. Kanddoyds went underground, found minerals galore. Used our mining tools, and we were going to split

the profits. Kanddoyds radioed ahead to Exchange, and we went into hyper together, came out together—and the Kandder ship suddenly goes boom!" He gently snapped his fingers. "We all saw it on our screens. Thought it was an engine goin’ supercrit or something, their tech being different from ours. But before we could do anything, Cap’n yelled at our navigator to take evasive action, and for crew to stand by in the life pods."

Akortu shook his head slowly. "I was steward, so my station was nearest the pods. I was the only one who got in one before someone commenced firing. Or if I wasn’t, I was the only pod got away—though I took a hit." He touched his burned side. "Zoomed off, pod sending SOS signal, and it was a Shver ship took me in. Long range, they got. Big cutter, maybe scared off the pirates or whoever. Anyway, they brought me here, put me in the lazarette, but Trade authorities wouldn’t believe my story, said I’d sabotaged my ship, and there I was, no ID, no cred—nothing. Well, with that talk o’ sabotage, I could see what was comin’, and when I was supposed to be asleep, I snuck out and hid out up here. Better than what seemed ahead. What’s that?"

"It’s a sprayjector. It won’t take the scarring away—you’d have to be lazed for that—but it will suffuse your damaged tissues with a special kind of collagen and give you elasticity again, or at least some. These burns here and here are very deep, and they didn’t heal right."

The man lay quiescent, so she proceeded with her treatment. After a minute or so he sighed. "Already feels better," he said. He stirred, was about to push away, then he half turned and muttered, his posture partly hostile and partly shamefaced, "You know what I been doin’ since I got up here, right?"

She shook her head. "Existing," she replied. "That’s all that matters right now."

He touched her hand. "Thankee, Doctor."

And he was gone, replaced by a tall, feline being who looked like an Arvas. She had a missing limb. This time Tooe translated as the being talked in a sibilant murmur. Rael cleared her scanner and called up the data on the Arvas race, then moved it slowly over the female as Tooe told in her peculiar mix of languages a story that was disturbingly like Akortu’s.

The amputated limb could not be helped—it was an old wound—but the being was suffering from a severe mineral deficiency, a mineral crucial to her race but unused by the Shver, Kanddoyds, or humans. Rael had some in her pack, and gave the Arvas a sprayjection, promising to try to obtain more.

The next story was even more disturbing; this was one of Tooe’s gang, who were mostly young. This being had been accidentally left behind when his family departed on a Trade run. It was merely a prank, and he did receive a message from the first stop that they were returning for him—but after that his family’s ship seemed to have vanished from the universe. Trade insisted they had no record of their movements; meanwhile he was running up a debt that could only be worked off in a work camp—so he panicked and ran.

That had been five Standard years ago.

The stories were taking on some unsettling similarities, Rael thought as she worked tirelessly to mend diseased or battered sentients from an astonishing variety of backgrounds. Even granted that some were lying, it still added up to a statistically impossible set of coincidences.

She worked without recourse to her chrono, until her back felt like it was on fire and her arms got so tired she could scarcely control her instruments. And finally she ran out of supplies, and got Tooe to promise that they would return again, and she packed up, quietly turning off the recorder she had secreted in her pack.

In silence she and Tooe retreated to the Queen.

In silence she boarded. Jellico was suddenly there, his hard gray eyes searching, but he asked no questions, just pointed to her cabin.

She made it down, and meant to shower, but instead she lay on her bunk to rest her eyes, and finally the tears came. She wept because she was tired, because she couldn’t possibly help them all, because of some terrible, vast injustice whose cost in terms of the innocent might not be solvable. She wept because the universe didn’t seem to care, and when she was empty, she dropped into a deep sleep, and dreamed of a weird chamber, and endless lines of broken, hopeless beings turning to her for succor.