Space Captain

VII

The Yarrow swarmed with activity as soon as he'd worked out what to do. It was the simplest imaginable solution to his problem as soon as it was seen. Only the Yarrow's engineer was bitter about it. Twice he had attempted to use his gadget. Each time it had blown itself out with exhaustive thoroughness as soon as Trent tried to charge its capacitors. Now Trent had men hacking at the monster crate containing an overdrive unit intended to be delivered to Loren. Trent had had the sardonic idea that it was meant to be installed in a privateer intended to be the companion of the Bear. He disapproved. But now, suddenly, he had an idea that he could put it to better use.

A solid shot hit the Yarrow's bow. There was the feel of a full-power Lawlor dash at the pirate ship. The Yarrow's mate was not an imaginative person, but he could carry out orders he understood. The orders to be carried out just now were perfectly understandable. Gain time.

Parts of the shipped overdrive coil became exposed. Trent wielded an axe himself, to get the crate cleared away. The engineer, muttering bitterly, brought out cables from the engine room stores. With Trent watching sharply, he welded them to that perfection of contact needed when currents in the tens of thousands of amperes were to be carried. He led the cables forward to the engine room. With Trent checking every move, he connected the overdrive coil in the cargo hold to the overdrive coil in the engine room. He installed a cutoff switch.

The Yarrow now had two overdrive coils connected in parallel. Each of them was designed to perform a very special feat, most simply if not lucidly expressed as making a hole in the cosmos around the ship, enclosing the ship in that hole, and then pulling the hole inside itself. With two such devices in parallel, when they were turned on together they should make a much larger hole than one alone. They should, together, have more power per ship-and-cargo ton of mass than the pirate ship could possibly have. If the pirate ship and the Yarrow were in overdrive at the same time and as near to each other as they were now, one overdrive coil would have to blow. Originally, it would have been the Yarrow's. Now it should be the pirate's.

Trent made his way back to the control room. The mate greeted him with relief.

"Another bow compartment's lost air, Captain," he said worriedly. "The old Yarrow's likely to get hurt before long. I've had a man for'rd checking, but it looks like if we rammed her now we'd get all smashed up—if we could ram her."

"We can," said Trent briefly.

He surveyed the situation. It appeared to be the same as before. The pirate ship winked into existence where nothing had been. It swung about, so its gun would bear on the Yarrow. The Yarrow rushed at it. The gun got three solid shot into the Yarrow's bow, and the pirate vanished into overdrive. There it was unreachable.

Trent said deliberately, "Overdrive coming. Three, two, one, zero."

The Yarrow vanished into overdrive.

The yellow double sun poured out its intolerable light and heat. As a double sun, it could not have planets or satellites of any other kind. There were no comets, no asteroids, no meteor streams. The only objects that could ever orbit it, even temporarily, were spaceships. Moments ago there had been two of them. Now, quite suddenly, there was only one. It came out of nowhere. For a long time it was quite alone. Then the other came out of nothingness.

This second ship now lay still, miles from the one that had broken out first. The second ship was damaged. There were shot-holes in its bow-plating. Some of them ran into one another. There was a deep dent where a shell had hit a hull-frame behind the plating and had not penetrated but had made a deep depression which spoiled the symmetry of its form.

It was, of course, the Yarrow. It had gone into overdrive immediately after the pirate ship. It had stayed there. The drive detector which told of another ship also in overdrive flickered and ceased to register anything. That meant, of course, that there was no other operating overdrive nearby. The pirate's drive had blown out. Now the Yarrow had come out of overdrive and could go back into it at pleasure. The pirate ship was in normal space and now could not leave it again. But it still had a gun. That weapon flamed furiously and solid shot moved through space toward the Yarrow. Trent shifted the Yarrow's position. At this distance it would take many seconds for the despairing pirate's missiles to reach the place where the Yarrow had been.

They reached that place. The Yarrow had moved. They went on, forever.

"She blew," said Trent briefly, for all the ship to hear. "Now we might ram her, because she can't go into overdrive any longer. But we're all shot up. Better not."

A faint noise came from the loudspeaker overhead. It was a voice. It babbled. It screamed. It begged pathetically. It babbled again. It was a spacesuit in emptiness, and unintelligible cries came from it.

The mate said, "Somehow, Captain, I don't think those pirates would pick up one of us if we was floating out of a smashed spaceboat like this fella."

"No," agreed Trent dourly. "They wouldn't. But they wouldn't need to ask us any questions about where our home port was, or how many ships like us were working out of it. And they wouldn't want to ask us if we knew anything about a ship named the Cytheria."

So he tracked down the voice from a spacesuit that had been in a now-shattered spaceboat. The man in that space-suit had found himself floating in absolute emptiness. In the confused, furious dashes of the Yarrow upon the pirate, both ships had moved many miles away from the spot where the spaceboat had been. Actually, the pirate ship was more than a hundred miles from the senselessly screaming voice. He couldn't pick it out with the naked eye against the background of all the stars there were. He was alone as no man can remain alone and stay sane. And his screamings had a specific cause. The man in the spacesuit could see the giant, double, yellow sun and feel its deadly heat. He screamed because he believed he looked at the two round doors which were the entrance gates to hell. And he felt that he was falling toward them.

The Yarrow picked him up, after an hour of searching, but nothing intelligible could be gotten out of him. He'd gone mad from terror.

The Yarrow arrived at Loren two shipdays later. She was landed by the spaceport landing-grid which rose half a mile from the wide flat plains of the colony world. Trent went aground and formidably to the spaceport office. His first question was about the Cytheria—if she'd arrived yet. She hadn't.

He said coldly, "Better tell your planetary president that his daughter's aboard her. You might tell him too, that his privateer has turned pirate, and he has reason to be worried. He and this whole planet may be in trouble because of it. And there's a pirate ship disabled but working hard to make repairs a couple of days' drive back toward Manaos. She's probably in unstable orbit around a double yellow star, but she may be able to patch herself up before the orbit breaks."

Then he said, "And I need repairs, too. But I'll do all right with some steel plates and some good welders. How do I arrange for that?"

There was agitation at the Loren spaceport, especially after the Yarrow's crewmen went aground and relaxed in the unprosperous dives outside the spaceport gates. The planet itself was not one of the outstanding human colonies in the Pleiads. It had originally been settled because of a genus of local fiber-producing plants which had a high luxury-value. For a time it prospered, producing fabulously soft and fabulously beautiful textile raw materials. The population went up into the millions, and there'd been a time when its spaceport was busy with ships from half the galaxy come to trade for ghil fiber. At that time a certain ecological difficulty seemed trivial. Earth-type vegetation did not thrive on Loren. The planet's native soil-bacteria were excellent for ghil-fiber plants, but not for potatoes or corn or commonplace crops like beans. To grow crops for human consumption, hormones and vitamin-base compounds and antibiotics had to be imported from off-planet.

Naturally humans, everywhere, have to carry the vegetation of Earth with them when they plant a colony, to supply the excessively complex food compounds the human race has adapted itself to require. Loren was highly prosperous for a long time. But it was a one-product world, subject to the disasters of a one-crop economy. And now it was a backwater world, its commerce stagnant and going steadily downhill.

Some of the people on Loren were excited about the Yarrow's arrival because trade goods were scarce. Even a privateer which requisitioned cargoes and gave receipts for them—to be redeemed in ghil fiber on Loren—could not supply the imported items a population of five millions needed. So even a single shipload of assorted imports could make a wild flurry in the business world on Loren.

Some of Loren's inhabitants were disturbed because they'd felt that the planet was being boycotted on account of its privateer, and now learned that interstellar trade was practically destroyed by pirates and even a privateer must work only empty shiplanes to no avail. The Yarrow was actually the first off-planet ship to touch ground on Loren in four months.

A few of Loren's people felt a special uneasiness because of the disabled pirate ship of which Trent had made report. In modern times there were no such things as armies or navies, of course. Police officials had to take over many functions formerly handled by the military. Some of them came to Trent and asked searching questions about the conflict near the double sun.

"We made out," Trent told them, "because we'd packed bulk cargo in our bow sections and their shells couldn't do but so much damage. If you mean to go after her, you should be able to find her with radar, and you shouldn't have much trouble. She's short-handed. We arranged that. We smashed three lifeboats full of men coming to board us. Have your doctors been able to get anything out of that pirate we brought in?"

They hadn't. They were recording all his babblings and studying them painstakingly. There was no doubt about his having been a pirate. But since his present mental state had been produced by an intolerable emotional stress of horror and despair, his babblings were naturally of emotional matters only. From his incoherencies they'd deduced at least three pirate ships in operation and half a dozen ships captured, but they couldn't be identified. Nor could they get any clue to where his own ship was based, nor a description of that home world, nor anything else that amounted to useful information. He babbled and wept and pleaded not to be returned to space where great yellow suns were the gates of hell and drew him irresistibly toward them.

Trent produced data from Manaos. It consisted of photos and fingerprints and retinal patterns of twelve pirates captured by Trent in the Hecla. They were the men for whose execution—if it happened—other pirates had sworn to take revenge. Their capture had sent innumerable deluded ships to space again, and there could be no doubt of the capture of enough spacemen and space travelers to let the pirates carry out their most bloodthirsty menaces. Trent mentioned sourly that both Marian and the Hecla's skipper said that pirate ship looked like the Bear, whose identity the pirate claimed while demanding surrender. Trent suggested that the police look up the spaceport records of the Bear's crew.

They came back presently, intolerably distressed. The pirates waiting trial, or release, on Manaos had been members of the privateer commissioned by Loren. What should they do?

"If it comes here," said Trent savagely, "blow hell out of it! But I rammed it. There are some repairs they'd have trouble explaining. It probably won't come. It'll go to its real base. It made use of you for information about space lanes and ship movements to make its piratical efforts easier. Now and then it brought in something. But you helped it to the best of your ability!"

The police officials went away again. They were embarrassed.

Trent supervised the beginning of repairs to the Yarrow's shot-punctured bow. They were not difficult. A few hull-plates had to be replaced entirely, but damaged frames could be straightened by equipment aground, and the shot-holes could be plugged or patch-welded and be practically as good as new. The inner-skin shot-holes required no more elaborate attention. The cargo bales damaged by shot came out. They were replaced by others. Loren's merchants offered to buy the damaged bales. They took them at a price to pay for the repair work twice over. Hopefully, they offered ghil fiber in payment, and Trent accepted it.

A ship went out to space from Loren. It also belonged to Marian's father. It carried a gun. Its bow was armored with sandbags inside. It carried guided missiles. It carried volunteers from the planetary police anxious to capture or destroy a pirate ship to make up for their embarrassment on discovering that they'd been an active partner of one.

The Cytheria did not come to port. According to the note from Marian, it had intended to leave the planet Sira the day the note was written. The letter had been brought to Trent, on Manaos, by the Yarrow. Immediately afterward, the threat from the pirates had arrived. Trent lifted the Yarrow from Manaos less than twelve hours later, when the Cytheria should just about have reached Midway. It should have left that planet almost immediately for Loren. It was certainly possible for it to have reached Loren even before the Yarrow.

It hadn't. It was now many days overdue.

The delay was entirely reasonable. The Cytheria could have gone to Midway by a roundabout route. It needn't have followed the regular ship lane from Sira to Midway. If there was a possibility of encountering pirates, it would be intelligent to follow a circuitous pathway. Pirates would tend to wait along the ship lanes with drive-detectors out and reporting the presence of any ship in overdrive for a completely unbelievable distance. If the Cytheria's skipper had made the journey roundabout, it would mean a longer journey. The Cytheria might not be overdue, if one knew the courses she'd followed.

Again, there might be alarm on Midway—there had been when the Yarrow stopped there—and the Cytheria could have stayed in port to wait until the pirate danger genuinely abated. She might be peacefully aground. There might be no ground for worry. But yet again, there might.

Perfectly reasonable causes might have operated to delay the Cytheria. But on the other hand she might have been taken by a pirate. In which case, Trent couldn't know where it had happened or where Marian, as a captive, might have been taken.

Days went by, and more days, and still more. Trent reminded himself of all the separate reasons for the Cytheria to be delayed… roundabout traveling, very sensible. Alarms of piracy to make her stay in port—entirely reasonable, perfectly possible, almost convincing. But not quite.

Trent suddenly realized that he didn't believe any of them. He simply had no more hope that Marian would ever arrive at Loren in the Cytheria. He had no hope she'd ever arrive anywhere. He was simply, desolately, and arbitrarily convinced that the Cytheria had been taken by pirates. Possibly by the Bear, which certainly wasn't the freebooter he'd encountered near the double yellow sun.

He gave no outward sign of his conclusion. There was nothing to be done about it. True, the Yarrow was fit to take to space again. True, the planetary president had sent word, several times, that he'd like to speak to Trent. But patch-weldings hardly mattered, and Trent didn't want to talk to Marian's father. He simply didn't want to. With piracy rife in the Pleiads, her father had let her travel. He was the owner of a privateer, and those who should know—Marian and the Hecla's skipper—declared that the pirate of the Hecla affair not only claimed to be the Bear but looked exactly like it.

Word came that the planetary president was coming to visit the Yarrow, which had defeated a pirate ship near the double yellow star. He was concerned because the ship gone to dispose of that disabled marauder hadn't yet returned.

Trent said sourly to the Yarrow's mate, "You can tell him that the police ship will have to rewind the pirate's drive even if it surrenders, if it's to bring that ship into port. Doing that will take time. You can say that maybe they had to use a guided missile on it and are trying to patch it up to come back. That'd take more time. Tell him anything you please. I don't want to talk to him!"

The mate asked, "What'll I tell him about the lady? His daughter?"

"Anything you like," growled Trent. "She should have written him what happened to the Hecla. But they say there's been no ship but us to land here in months. So they haven't had any off-planet mail unless in the one sack we brought here. Maybe he doesn't know about the Hecla. If he doesn't, you can tell him if you choose. I'm claiming salvage out of his pocket for getting her to port after she was abandoned. He'll probably dislike me for that. Anyway, I don't want to talk to him!"

"Where're you going?" asked the mate.

"Off somewhere until he leaves," said Trent. He shrugged. "I've agreed to take ghil-fiber for the money due us for what I've sold here. It's been suggested that I see what a ghil plantation is like. It was intended as a courtesy; I'll use it as an alibi."

The mate said nothing. Trent got a ground-car and left the spaceport before the planetary president could arrive. It was not polite, but Trent was past politeness now. The Cytheria was at least eight days overdue by any calculation at all, if her skipper hadn't stayed aground on Midway. If she'd been captured by a pirate ship near the beginning of her voyage, she could have been taken twenty-two days ago, which was well before a battered small ship brought the threat of the pirate to Manaos. Marian could have been dead for three weeks. Or she might not be dead.

Trent drove furiously to the ghil-fiber plantation. He wasn't interested in plantations. It was unbearable to think of Marian dead or a prisoner of pirates who'd promised to murder ten spacemen or passengers for every one of their number hanged. It was time for him to take action. It happened to be impossible to take appropriate action, but he had to do something! So he resolved savagely to take to space himself as soon as the planetary president would have left the Yarrow.

He had no information, but he'd had a program in mind when he took command of his ship. The owners had offered him salvage rights. He'd used them, as the Hecla proved. He had the choice of ports-of-call and other privileges the owners had granted. He'd use them, though not as might be expected. He'd had some definite ideas about pirate-hunting, which should be an extremely profitable business if one didn't happen to be killed at it. He'd thought of it as an approach to salvage on a considerable scale. He'd preferred to have had definite information to start with, but since he was now suddenly and irrevocably convinced that Marian was dead, he'd set about hunting pirates anyhow, and somehow try to pay back whoever had harmed her.

Meanwhile, he drove to the ghil plantation to stay where Marian's father wouldn't be. As a visitor from off-planet who was actually buying ghil fiber, he was given red-carpet treatment at the plantation. He saw fields upon fields of ghil plants, and planting machinery and cultivating machinery and harvesting machinery. He saw processing equipment and a small research laboratory for improving the quality of ghil seeds. The laboratory was run by a squarish elderly scientist who took it for granted that anybody who saw a ghil-plant field would immediately be fascinated by experiments in line-bred mutant field crops. To the original purpose of his research he'd added a search for another plant than ghil to make a new one-crop economy for Loren.

He had tiny hot-houses in which he grew assorted samples of vegetation from more than thirty different worlds other than Loren. He maintained appropriate climatic conditions and growing-soil for each separate planet's vegetation in the separate plastic shelters. He almost—almost—aroused Trent's interest when he explained how he could describe the planet a plant came from by examination of a single plant or sometimes even a leaf. He could tell the composition of its atmosphere, its gravitational field-strength, the climate, its temperature range, and even its seasonal changes all from a leaf of an unidentified botanical Specimen. Trent listened with what was almost interest.

But suddenly something made him turn away from this lecture to stare at the horizon behind him. The planet's landing-grid could be seen even from here, but there was a thread of white smoke uncoiling swiftly from within it. Something went blasting toward the sky. It reached the blue, went beyond. It thinned and thinned and thinned. Then it was gone.

And half an hour later a ground-car screeched to a stop at the ghil plantation. It had come for Trent. The Yarrow's mate had sent one of the crewmen to give Trent exact information. He was clearing away all scaffolding and getting ready to take to space immediately Trent arrived.

Because the Cytheria had come into port. An hour since she'd called down to ask coordinates for landing. The landing-grid operator had given them, and fumbled far, far out in emptiness until the grid's force-fields found and locked onto the ship. They brought her swiftly and precisely to ground. In the very center of the spaceport, the Cytheria stood upright. A man—one man only—came out of a passenger-port and trudged across the tarmac to the landing-grid's office. He went in and asked if there was mail for the Cytheria. There was. One letter. It looked official. It had come in the single bag of mail put on the Yarrow just before she was allowed to lift off of Manaos.

The single figure from the Cytheria trudged back to that ship, carrying the one letter in its official-seeming envelope. He went in the passenger-port. It closed behind him. The Cytheria asked by space-phone for immediate lift-off.

The grid office was astonished. This was so completely out of the ordinary run of events that the operator blankly asked why. What was the matter? Wasn't there any cargo? Weren't there any passengers to come ashore? Wasn't there one passenger in particular?

The operator should have focussed the grid's force-fields on the ship aground, as if perhaps to lift her. Then he should have held her aground in despite of protests or threats. He didn't happen to think of it. Such a thing had never been necessary or desirable. It was… unthinkable.

And the Cytheria suddenly emitted flames. They rolled over the empty spaceport tarmac. She lifted on her emergency-rockets and plunged skyward.

When Trent got to the spaceport, already three parts maddened by shock and frustration and grief, the Cytheria—which should have had Marian aboard to be landed here—was long gone away to space again. She'd long since gone into overdrive. She was already millions upon millions of miles away and traveling many times faster than the speed of light. And there was no faintest clue to her destination.