Space Captain

V

In the unwritten history of the family line of Captains Trent, there was no other achievement which exactly matched this. It was because, of course, no exactly similar problem had ever turned up before. The Hecla was unarmed save for such equipment as even a small-town police department might possess. But with it Trent had managed to drive away from the repaired pirate ship with more than half its original crew in captivity aboard, without pursuit by the pirate, and without even an injury to any of his own spacemen. And he was disappointed because he'd hoped to capture the pirate ship itself.

The vapor he'd used was, of course, all the fog-gas-contaminated air in the ship, released at once with more fog-gas poured into the outgoing flood. The flashes were tear-gas bombs exploded outside the ship on the side away from the pirate. And the vanishing of the Hecla was simply her rewound overdrive coil in action, with the repaired Lawlor drive pushing at capacity to make use of it while the pirate still desperately tried to make contact with its boarding-parties.

The final element the pirate could not understand was the vapor. Gases released in space fling themselves precipitately in all directions toward nothingness. But here was a cloud in space. And the answer they didn't think of was that fog-gas was not a vapor but a suspension of ultra-microscopic particles, which do not repel each other with the vehemence of gas particles.

So the pirate ship lay stunned and bewildered, contemplating the vapor-cloud where the Hecla had been as it slowly spread and thinned and finally disappeared.

That cloud, obviously, was more stage-setting. Your normal criminal is a very practical person, but timid. He is deeply suspicious of things he does not understand, and Trent had arranged a series of events that would be wholly mystifying to anybody who hadn't seen the preparations to bring them about. Trent's stage-dressing mystified the pirate skipper, and by the time—stammering and frustrated and with his mind effectively scrambled—by the time he looked at the overdrive detector to see if the Hecla had vanished in overdrive, Trent had made a full-velocity overdrive dash while confusion in the pirate's control room could be counted on. By the time the pirate's detector was examined, he was some thousands of overdrive miles away but in normal space again, listening for a possible radar-pulse. By the time the pirate attempted that, for an explanation of no drivefield registering on his instruments, Trent was back in overdrive on an entirely new course.

For a very considerable period, then, he alternated between time in and out of overdrive. For as long as the pirate stumblingly tried to follow, Trent ran the Hecla on a zigzag pattern of tracks with which his ancestors in the last two wars on Earth were familiar. They'd used it to thwart submarines. Captain Trent of the Yarrow and the Hecla used it to elude a pirate.

It worked very well. In due time he made a planet-fall on the world of Manaos, and again in due time its landing-grid sent up fumbling, nudging fields of force, and they locked onto the Hecla and drew her down to ground.

And there Trent adopted the manners and customs of businessmen. He behaved with great sedateness. He reported to the spaceport authorities that he'd brought in the salvaged Hecla. She'd been attacked by pirates. A full account of the event was on file on the planet Sira. She'd been abandoned by her captain and crew because she was disabled, with her overdrive and Lawlor units useless, her air gone, and the return of the pirate to be anticipated. An account of this was also on file on Sira. He, Trent, had found and salvaged her. He resigned her now to the custody of the Admiralty Court on Manaos, making due claim for salvage on the ship and her cargo.

And then he mentioned negligently that he had twelve members of the pirate's crew welded into an emptied cargo hold, to whom food and water had been supplied through small openings since their capture. He'd be glad to have them taken off his hand. And then he asked if by any chance his proper ship the Yarrow had come into port on Manaos.

She hadn't.

There was great enthusiasm on Manaos over the capture of the pirates. An imposing array of police in ground-cars and with copters flying overhead went to the spaceport to receive them from Trent. There were mobs in the street to observe the cavalcade. Other crowds tried to crash the spaceport gate to watch as the police went into the Hecla to remove the prisoners. Trent and his crewmen identified them separately—they'd make formal depositions about them later—and then let the police bring them out of the cargo hold.

After nearly two weeks' imprisonment with no coddling, the prisoners were not prepossessing. They were unshaven and disheveled and repulsive. But above all they were defiant.

Stridently and with fury, they announced to news cameras that they would not be hanged. Their shipmates and their ship's companion pirate vessels would be working from this moment to gather hostages for their safety. They'd take tens of dozens of spacemen and space travelers prisoner and hold them. If anything happened to the captive pirates, much more and worse would befall the prisoners the pirates would take. The un-piratical Pleiad worlds could count, rasped the prisoners, on having not less than a dozen crewmen and passengers in space murdered for every pirate punished. There would be picture-tapes, presently, of the details of sample pirate captives being killed, to show precisely what would happen on a larger scale if Trent's captives were harmed.

These defiances, of course, were broadcast live to every vision-screen on the planet. Then small and very agile space craft took to space and vanished, bound for the other Pleiad worlds. They took with them the highest value in cargo such minute space craft could carry. It was news. They'd be paid so extravagantly for news that they felt the risk of themselves being captured by pirates was justified.

The twelve prisoners were carried by helicopter to an official prison, since their defiance meant danger to them if they were carried through the streets. Then police had to be posted about the Hecla to protect Trent from admirers and still more from newsmen.

He was practically besieged in the Hecla for three days. Then the cordon of camera-carrying watchers more or less diminished, because the Hecla's salvage crew was at large upon the town and were much more exciting sources of news. They'd originally slipped out of the ship to spend their wages. But they found they couldn't. They were everywhere surrounded by admirers who wouldn't let them spend their money. People gloated because somebody had been victorious over a pirate ship, the victory consisting of escape from it and the use of police-type weapons upon a dozen of its crew. The men who'd salvaged the Hecla found that they had innumerable friends who wanted to buy them drinks and bask in their society. They even found themselves possessed of vast charm to the ladies they met about the spaceport. They told highly embroidered tales of pirates and piracy and deeds of derring-do, and everybody was convinced that the age of piracy was at an end.

Trent waited for the Yarrow. He found himself less popular than his crewmen. They, at least, said nothing discouraging to anybody. But Trent did. Asked for advice about ships taking to space again, he pointed out that he'd cost one pirate ship some men. That was all. There might be more than one pirate ship. He was inclined to think, he said curtly, that the planets of a given star-group should cooperate and establish something like an armed force to make piracy unprofitable. He didn't think that impractical, but he did not think that his own personal salvage of one ship the pirates had disabled justified anyone else in lifting off ground. Not yet.

His opinion was too sensible to make a good news story. In the first week after he brought the Hecla to ground, no less than three previously grounded ships left the Manaos spaceport to attempt business as usual but at higher prices among the stars. During the second week, four more left for emptiness. In the third week—when he was beginning to worry about the Yarrow—four more lifted off. The same thing was undoubtedly happening through the Pleiad group as the news of Trent's achievement spread. He wasn't happy about it. When the Yarrow finally came into port, long after sundown and with the mate in command, the mate reported stolidly that he'd completed the trading deals Trent had arranged on Sira. He felt that he could have traded much more and at a higher profit but for the news that tiny news-carrying craft were spreading energetically through the Pleiads.

"All kinds of ships are lifting off," said the mate stolidly. "They're racing to try to hit high-priced markets with their merchandise. That Miss… Miss Hale, she took passage on the Cytheria, bound first to Midway and then to Loren. She left port the same day we did. There's a letter for you."

He handed it over. Trent read it. He swore despairingly.

Long ago and away back in the succession of Captains Trent, a certain Captain Trent, after due reflection, decided that he'd made a mistake about the young lady he'd just bidden a decorous good-bye to on the quarterdeck of a ship her father owned. Having reflected, he decided that she shouldn't, after all, be allowed to return to a state of tutelage under her father. He was plainly not calculated to be a good influence on her. He was not a fit companion for her. He was positively not qualified to pass on so important a matter as who should be the young lady's husband. And having come to this conclusion, that Captain Trent immediately put out to sea to overtake her ship. Conservative persons considered that he carried a hazardous amount of sail, considering the weather. But it was rumored that he had permitted no delay for any purpose whatever except the loading of his barkentine's guns.

This, however, was hardly a parallel to Trent's actions now. His motivation was a polite and wholly decorous letter from Marian Hale.

Dear Captain Trent;

I've just heard of your marvellous achievement in re-taking the Hecla from pirates who'd boarded her, and of coming into port on Manaos with half the pirate crew in irons. I am boasting that I know you personally! Please let me suggest, though, that you let my father make a proposal in settlement of salvage on the Hecla. It will certainly not be less to your advantage than an Admiralty Court award, and the legal expenses will be much less!

I do hope you will bring the Hecla to Loren in completion of such an arrangement. I am anxious to have my father thank you for me as I thank you for myself. Since you have made the spaceways quite safe again, I am sailing for home on the Cytheria, which will leave today and stop first at Midway and then go on to Loren. I do hope to introduce you to my father. He owes you so much! And so do I.

Sincerely,

Marian Hale.

Considered dispassionately, it was not a remarkable letter, though it had cost much more effort and spoiled paper in its composition than most. But Trent didn't read it dispassionately. Marian was in space. Now. And there were pirate ships in space. He burst into explosive words at the next to last sentence. The Yarrow's mate stared at him.

"I've sold some of the Yarrow's cargo," said Trent feverishly, "but no money's passed, so that's all right. I'm going to get the Yarrow cleared for immediate lift-off for Loren. You get the small arms from the Hecla while I get clearance and a lift-off order." Then he said fiercely, "Don't let anything keep you from having those small arms on board and anything else you have to have by the time I'm back!"

He left the Yarrow and headed for the spaceport office practically at a run. As he ran, he swore bitterly. In a perfectly real sense it was not his business that Marian Hale took passage on a spaceship at a time he considered dangerous. It wasn't his business that ships lifted off from Manaos at the same time. But he'd brought Marian off the Hecla when by the laws of probability neither she nor any other member of the Hecla's company should ever have been heard of again. He felt no responsibility for any of the Hecla's crew even now. They could take care of themselves. But Marian couldn't. Trent had the extremely unhappy feeling that nobody but himself was qualified to protect Marian from disaster. He'd proved it. Now she very likely was heading for further disaster and again nobody but himself seemed to be qualified to do anything about it.

He reached the spaceport office, and it was more than two hours after sunset. There was a clerk on duty, to be sure, but he was on stand-by watch. He read placidly in an office chair placed in a good light. He looked up inquiringly when Trent came in the office door.

"Lift-off clearance," said Trent curtly. "The Yarrow. She came in an hour ago. I'm taking her out again. Make it fast!"

The clerk recognized Trent. There weren't many people on at least half a dozen planets of the Pleiads who wouldn't have recognized him today and tomorrow and probably the day after tomorrow. But fame is fleeting, and notoriety is more so, and Trent did not and wouldn't ever have that steady, recurrent, repetitive mention in the news tapes that would make anybody recall his name after three days of no public mention. But the clerk did recognize him tonight. He even tried to be obliging. But there was difficulty.

"The Yarrow came in under her mate," said the spaceport clerk uneasily, "and you want to take her out again as skipper. I know it's perfectly all right, Captain, but I can't order the grid operator to lift you off unless…"

Trent exploded. The clerk looking almost frightened, set about the unsnarling of red tape. Trent paced up and down the office, muttering to himself, while a clerk made vision-phone calls, and located somebody who would have to sign something, and somebody else who would have to authorize something, and somebody else still who must put an official stamp on it. And Trent halted sometimes to listen to a particular conversation, and then began to pace again.

He did not think tenderly of Marian. He raged, because he had saved her once from a very great danger she hadn't gotten into of her own accord, and out of which nobody else could have helped her. Now someone had let her get back into danger of which she had no clear realization, and nobody else seemed to comprehend. Again nobody had any idea of how to get her out. This was not romance in any ordinary sense. But it was an infuriating thing to have happen. Trent clenched and unclenched his hands and fumed.

The news tapes all over the city—all over the planet, for that matter—murmured coyly of exciting news. The news was that the Yarrow had come into port, and the Yarrow was that gallant ship which had rammed a pirate and damaged it, so that Captain Trent could later recapture a ship that pirates had seized and bring it into port with pirate prisoners. The story was already being twisted and made inaccurate.

A spaceman who'd helped salvage the Hecla heard it. He'd gone out in the Yarrow to find the then-derelict ship. Now he was a hero, and slightly drunk, and he felt a fine sentimental regard for that old ship the Yarrow on which he'd gone out to accomplish fame. He resolved generously to visit his former shipmates and tell them of his triumphs. He began a not-too-accurate progress toward the ship. He encountered a fellow-hero of the Hecla's salvage. That friend knew of two more nearby. A newsman picked up the intended sentimental journey. He gathered the rest, and went along with his camera to get a picture and a story about heroes' friendships for each other and their plans for further anti-pirate activity. They wobbled a little as they walked, but their intentions were firmly emotional.

They got to the Yarrow, and the mate was tearing his hair. Word had somehow gotten out that the Yarrow was about to lift off. He was being besieged. A freight-broker, in particular, offered double freight and something extra for the mate to take one large crate to Loren. The mate did not know whether to pass up the business or accept it. The crewmen hadn't gotten back with the small arms and he didn't know what to do about if. Trent wasn't one to turn down business. He was called away to answer a message from the spaceport office. It was Trent, insisting on haste. A big truck ran the crate up to a cargo door. The members of the Hecla's salvage crew went into the Yarrow's forecastle for a sentimental greeting of their oldest friends. They weren't there. The salvage crew sat down to wait for them, and promptly fell asleep.

A totally frustrating and bewildering development infringed on Trent's plans. Orders from the highest authority on the planet commanded that no ship be lifted off or allowed to lift itself off from the spaceport until further orders. Police came and stood by, lounging, so that nothing could be done by the spaceport crew against these orders. More police appeared. Presently the spaceport was totally police-occupied. Trent protested furiously, and as he was a personage of some note since his capture of pirates, a high official told him in confidence that there'd been an ultra-long-range message from the other side of the solar system. It said that a ship bound for Manaos had been stopped by a pirate. Then it had been released, incredibly, but for the fact that it brought a message from the pirates. That ship was on the way and should land tonight. It had been in the hands of the pirates for two days while the message was prepared. The pirates then took half of its crew for captives and contemptuously let the rest go, to deliver their message. The remainder of the crew finished rewinding the overdrive coil. They'd come on to land at Manaos with the message. And they were being met at the spaceport by what was practically the government of Manaos. Because Trent had brought in pirates captured in the act of piracy, and they had threatened retaliation from their fellow-freebooters and this message might be another threat.

Trent clenched and unclenched his hands. A message from the pirates might mean anything. It could even tell something about Marian. He found his throat gone dry. He waited. The news had come from a ship already broken out of overdrive. It was now driving at full Lawlor-drive speed toward Manaos, but it could not use overdrive in the areas where a planet had broken up into asteroids or where the elongated orbits of comets might interfere. But it would arrive before dawn.

And it did. It was a small and battered trading ship, and the landing-grid brought it down through lowering dark clouds that hid all the stars. It came slowly into the light cast upward from the spaceport, and it came down smoothly and touched the ground, and the large sleek ground-cars of officialdom went over to where it rested. Police blocked the approach of anybody else, including Trent. He found himself surrounded by newsmen and wondered bitterly how they knew what was going on.

The newsmen saw nothing. Trent saw no more. It seemed that aeons passed while the shiny cars stayed motionless about the landed small ship. It was far away over the spaceport tarmac, nearly as far as the lacy landing-grid reached.

At long last the sleek cars went away, escorted by police vehicles. Only one of them came toward the spaceport office, and newsmen broke the police cordon to get there first. Trent went along with the rest. This would be a news briefing.

It happened inside the spaceport office building, where there was room for many passengers and their luggage to gather before they took ship and went away among the stars. Now a man with a disillusioned expression stood up on a table to make the official announcement of what was toward. His voice boomed.

"Some hours ago," he announced, "a message by microwave from the other side of the social system said that the ship Castor was coming in with a message from the Pleiad pirates, who had captured her, held her two days, and then released her minus half her crew. The message deals with the pirates taken prisoner and now held on Manaos awaiting trial."

Lights flashed at irregular intervals as the men with cameras took pictures to go on the morning news tapes. From time to time the harsh glow of longer-continuing lights for movie-tapes made the speaker look strange and unhuman. His face and figure were seemingly flattened by the excessive white glare. When more than one such light shone on him he shielded his eyes with his hands and gave them no usable picture. He went on loudly,

"The message was to this government and delivered in a sealed envelope. It announced that the pirates are now taking prisoners from ships they stop. They are, in fact, capturing ships to take prisoners. They swear that if their companions in our jail are hanged, they will hang—or worse—ten of their prisoners for each one of ours in prison here. The rest of the message tells of the arrangement by which we can communicate with them. The text of the main letter will be released later. The proposed arrangement for communication and for exchange of prisoners, of course, cannot be made public."

He got down from the table on which he'd stood to give the news release. Newsmen swarmed about him, barking questions they couldn't hope for him to answer unless he lost his temper at their insistence. But that wasn't likely. Police helped him to get his car through the senselessly jostling throng, with equally aimless flash-units continuing to make explosive white flames all about.

Trent went back to the Yarrow. Some time during the morning, he believed, he might be able to reach an official high-enough-up to get him an exception allowing the Yarrow to be lifted to space. After all, he had fought a pirate ship and won the fight in a limited degree. If any ship should be allowed to take to space, it should be the Yarrow. He could even—and here he knew a mirthless amusement—insist that he had to go out to space to try out McHinny's invention. It might work.

Actually, McHinny's gadget didn't have to be referred to. The Yarrow had applied for lift-off for the purpose of a voyage to Loren. Permission was granted, subject to carrying mail to that destination. There was no mention made of the huge crate containing an overdrive coil-unit to be delivered to a consignee there.

The permit and an extremely thin mail sack came to the ship by the same messenger. It may be that Trent should have put two and two together. He didn't, because he'd been trying to learn if the half-crew left in the small message-carrying ship had learned anything about a ship called the Cytheria. They hadn't. Therefore, Trent was savagely anxious to get to space. He didn't check on a number of things. The big crate. He didn't look in the forecastle.

It was just barely sunrise when the landing-grid's force field fumbled at the Yarrow, and tightened, and then began to lift the ship swiftly upward. It happened to be a very fine sunrise, with more different and more beautiful colorings than are often seen by early risers.

But the Yarrow went up and up, through the sunrise, to emptiness.