Space Captain

III

Marian Hale watched out a viewport while the great globe of Sira swelled and grew gigantic through the Yarrow approach. The Hecla's skipper pointed out one of the three moons as the ship went past and explained what a Trojan orbit was. Later he pointed out landmarks on the enlarging world of Sira.

Eventually the ship touched ground. The girl, smiling, turned to Trent.

"We're aground, and there was a time when it didn't seem we'd ever be aground again! What are you going to do, Captain?"

"It's nearly noon here," said Trent. "Before sunset I'll have to do a little trading and I've some personal chores. Then I'll lift off again."

"When?"

"As soon as possible," he told her. "I'm not here for fun."

"I need to get in touch with our business agent," she observed. "We don't have ambassadors, here in the Pleiads, just business agents. Don't you think I'll be perfectly safe going on to Loren from here?"

He shrugged. He wasn't sure. There'd been one pirate ship, certainly, and while it wasn't likely to be professionally active again for a certain length of time, there might be more pirates in this area. There would be, to be sure, ships taking to space in the belief that the Yarrow had struck a hard blow at piracy. But that would make the time ripe for pirates to make many and rich captures.

"I'm not qualified to advise you. I'd say no, though I'm lifting off myself. If I were your father, I'd tell you to stay safely aground here until there'd been no ship missing for a good many months."

She smiled again. She held out her hand. He took it.

"I go aground now. Thank you, Captain. I have to help the Hecla's crew report her loss and the circumstances. But you'll need to make a report too, won't you?"

He nodded. She didn't withdraw her hand.

"One thing more. Could you talk to our business agent for a few moments this afternoon before you lift off?"

"I'll try," said Trent.

He shook her hand formally, and she withdrew it. Again smiling, she went out of the control room and to ground. Trent, frowning, saw her walk to the spaceport offices. It was midday, here. It took thought to keep days and nights straight after a long time in space. Marian would rate as a very important person on Sira. Trent could bask briefly in the radiance of her importance if he chose. But he didn't.

He said briskly to the mate, "I'll have to talk about the Hecla at the spaceport office. Then I'll talk to some brokers, about our cargo. Then I'll take a look around the spaceport dives to see what kind of men are grounded here because of the pirates."

"Any ground leave for our men?" asked the mate.

"Hmm," said Trent. He considered. "Spaceport hands will take care of any cargo unloading I may arrange. But I'll lose time talking about the Hecla. Give them eight hours. We ought to be ready to lift off then."

"They'll just have time to get drunk," said the mate dourly, "and not enough to sober up again."

"I'm going to ship some extra hands if I can," Trent told him.

He turned to leave the control room. The mate said, "Captain?"

"What?"

"That lady," said the mate stolidly, "got to talk to me yesterday. She wanted to find out something. I didn't know whether to tell her or not."

"What did she want to know?"

"If you was married. I told her no. Right?"

"Yes," said Trent. "It's true. I'm not."

He went off the ship and to the very tedious business of answering questions about the Hecla, and then talking business to brokers and merchants gathered at the airport since news of a trading ship's arrival spread. They were very hungry for goods to sell. He parted with as much of his cargo as he thought wise. It was close to sundown before he went to investigate the places of business just outside the spaceport gates.

He applied for clearance to lift off at once. He had ten new hard-bitten characters to add to the Yarrow's crew, and the ship was set to sail.

"All hands prepare for lift," said Trent's voice from dozens of speakers, making a choral effect of the words. "Lift starts in ten seconds. All hands to duty stations. Five seconds… Lift starts."

The Yarrow rose toward the star-filled night sky, and the lattice girders of the landing-grip slid past and vanished below. The planet Sira appeared as merely a vast blackness in which infinitesimal specks of light—street lamps—grew more and more minute until they disappeared. Then there was merely blackness against an inconceivable mass of stars.

But presently the sunlit part of Sira came into view and everything was changed.

The trading ship Yarrow went into overdrive after leaving Sira, and Trent had a sound night's sleep, and next ship-morning he was a good many million, billion, and trillion miles from it.

He went over the ship and found everything to his liking. Even McHinny showed him his pirate-discourager approaching re-completion. It was three-quarters of the way back into operating condition. Trent, feeling kindly to all the cosmos, praised him enough for McHinny to look almost contented. The new members of the crew had been put to work—the mate saw to that—and they regarded Trent with satisfying respect and confidence.

Trent himself worked painstakingly in the control room on a problem in mathematics. It was tricky. He wanted to re-locate the Hecla. The Yarrow's taped log had a record of all courses, drive strengths, and durations of drive since her departure from her home port. She could get back approximately to where she'd left the Hecla. But the Hecla wasn't there now.

She'd been sent off on her Lawlor drive on a course Trent had noted down. But real accuracy of position in space was out of the question. And nobody could tell what was accurate, anyhow. An attempt at it involved the local sun's proper motion—the sun from whose system one had started out-one's individual velocity in three dimensions due to the motion of the spaceport one left, a highly corrected account of drive efficiency, the total mass of ship and cargo, and a few score other factors.

And, starting from that, there was the problem of finding the Hecla. In the end Trent calculated a cone of probability. The Hecla should be within that imaginary geometrical shape in space. Her most probable position would be somewhere along its axis. As one went out from it the probability would grow less. And the Hecla would be still accelerating.

He did the best he could and went to see how the combat instructions went on. They went well. He added some details.

One of the new hands made a suggestion. It was a good one. He incorporated it into the course of instruction. It looked more and more as if he were preparing for a piratical career. On the second day out of port he suspended the weapons exercises to shift cargo. He had masses of relatively low-value cargo packed in the Yarrow's bow. The reason was, of course, that the pirate had carried and used a gun. Trent had seen one of the projectiles, spent, in the Hecla's engine room. It had penetrated the Hecla's inner and outer hulls, but had done little damage inside. He shifted cargo so that a shell from dead ahead would have to pierce not only the Yarrow's two hulls but various bales of merchandise before it could do much damage. The understanding was, naturally, that the Yarrow would be driving toward any cannon-carrying antagonist in any action that took place.

The mate nodded stolidly when Trent explained it.

"If I'm not aboard," said Trent, "it may be a good trick."

The mate nodded again, but he didn't really grasp the idea that Trent might be missing from the Yarrow and himself in command. He didn't even grasp it when, entering the handwritten items in the control room log—quite separate from the engine room taped record—he found a memo in Trent's handwriting:

"11-4-65 8 bells dog. According to agreement owners Yarrow now engaged salvage at charter rate until return commercial port."

It was very conscientious of Trent.

Four days passed. Five. Six. Trent brought the Yarrow out of overdrive. The stars were a very welcome sight. He sent out an emergency radar pulse. One. He waited half an hour. Nothing came back. In overdrive, he shifted the Yarrow's position. Again he sent out a radar pulse.

It was unpleasant. Everybody on the Yarrow experienced the sensations accompanying a switch into or out of overdrive twice every half-hour. Presently everybody's belly-muscles ached from the knotted cramps that came with the nausea every time.

On some ships, under some skippers, there would have been protests right away. On the Yarrow under Trent there were no protests, but there were pained questions about how long it would be kept up.

"I'm looking for something," said Trent pleasantly. "When I find it, this will stop."

The inquiring crewman was satisfied, if unhappy. He spread the word among the rest. There were guesses at what Trent might be looking for. There was general agreement that it must be a ship, of whose course and probable position Trent had information. But granting that, the guesses ranged from a space liner chartered to carry colonists, including women, to their new homes, down to a mere bank ship carrying rare metals to balance financial accounts between star clusters. But nobody guessed at the Hecla.

It was the Hecla, though. Naturally! But the return of a radar pulse came only after many surges of radar radiation following the crewman's question.

Then the radar pulse did come back, and the Yarrow moved toward the reflection point. This, obviously, had to be in normal space, with stars. In terms of miles traveled, the pursuit of the distant object was trivial. But Trent had not only to overtake it but to match velocities. It was a rather painful operation, but in time it was accomplished. The Hecla floated alongside the Yarrow, presently, and Trent leaped the space between the big steel hulls. Arrived, he crawled along the Hecla's hull to the open airlock door through which he'd left it many days before. He swung in and released his lifeline. The lock door closed. In minutes the Hecla ceased to accelerate and the Yarrow shot ahead and the mate had to bring her back around and come alongside again.

Then there was fine and finicky maneuvering. Ultimately the two ships touched gingerly. Cargo doors opened, facing each other. Cargo from the Yarrow went aboard the wrecked Hecla. Men went about the inside of that ship, searching for the places where solid-shot missiles had penetrated. Some of them were to be stopped, not all. There was violent activity of other sorts. Tanks of air went from one ship to the other, police equipment bought on Dorade, Shaped-charge explosive packages, satchel-bombs, food and water.

Trent went back aboard the Yarrow for final consultation with the mate.

"You'll head for Sira," he commanded. "We didn't make delivery of everything I agreed to sell on Sira. You can finish up with that. Then you can go on to Manaos. Here are some cargo lists and prices. You can unload this stuff for these prices. Understand?" The mate nodded.

"If all goes well," Trent told him, "I'll come into port on Manaos. You can wait for me there for three weeks. Then if you like you can hunt for me along here." He indicated an area on a three-dimensional chart of this part of the Pleiad cluster. "If you don't find us in a reasonable time go back to Manaos. Maybe we'll have made it. If we aren't there then, you're the Yarrow's skipper. In which case, look out for McHinny. He means well but he's a fool. Don't ever take his advice!"

The mate nodded again. He looked acutely unhappy. Presently the Yarrow drew away from the Hecla. That round-bellied cargo-carrier of space looked intact. It wasn't. Its overdrive coil was blown and its Lawlor drive patched for strictly emergency use. It was empty of air and there were shell-holes in its plating.

The Yarrow went into overdrive. It vanished. The Hecla was left alone.

In a way, it was curiously like the occasion when a barkentine of an earlier time had been found by an earlier Captain Trent, battered by cannon balls and leaking, with its masts shot overside and its boats long gone. This was in a sea where Captain Trent was bitterly unwelcome, so much so that a man-of-war had been assigned especially to hunt for him. But he went aboard the derelict with hands from his proper crew, and his proper ship sailed away leaving him to make what he could of the situation.

It was quite a similar state of things, except that the Captain Trent of the Yarrow was aboard a derelict of space, and the ship that wanted ferociously to find him was a pirate.

It was now very nearly ready to resume its professional activities.