"My name is David Webster, pilot's license number TG2-7L90-300. I want to record ownership of a Zede Starliner, serial number 789—"
"Hold on, Captain Webster."
He held. The boy, Pete, pulled the groundcar to a stop at a private entrance to the T-Town Space Terminal.
"Hope you're not in a hurry," David said as he waited.
"Not at all, sir."
"Captain David Webster, TG2-7L90-300?"
"Correct."
"There is an urgent for you."
David felt a little tinge of apprehension. "Yes?"
"It's six months old, Captain Webster." The speaker was a female of pleasant voice and some sensitivity. "Perhaps you have already received it."
"No, I haven't," David said.
"The message, which went out on all routes, is from a Miss Ruth Webster," the voice said. "She requests that you return to Tigian II as quickly as possible."
"And that's it?"
"That's it."
"Thank you. I imagine that the urgent was addressed to the Little David."
"Yes, sir."
So that was why he hadn't received it. His old ship had been left on Zede IV and even as he had lifted off in the new Starliner the Little David was undergoing renovation and renaming. "May we finish registration of my new ship?" he asked politely.
"Yes, sir."
He made one more call, to his sister, Ruth.
"I'm glad you're home, David," Ruth said in her deep, pleasant voice.
"How soon can you get here?"
"Half an hour. Shall I meet you at the house?" He spoke of his parents'
house, his childhood home, Ruth's childhood home.
"No. Please come to my place."
He fought back the urge to ask her what was wrong. He didn't want to hear it by communicator.
Tigian City, T-Town, was humming with activity. Ground and aircars purred, zipped, soared, sank, rose, stopped, started, darted in and out of exits. There was a smell in the air, hints of things industrial, of crowded habitation, a smell that made David pleasantly nostalgic. He was carrying only his overnight case containing toothbrush, razor, and other items of personal hygiene. He ordered up an aircar and placed a call from the passenger's seat to an old-line men's store which had records of his body measurements and his tastes. He believed in traveling light. A couple ofchanges of clothing with the appropriate auxiliary items, underwear, socks, would be delivered to his sister's house not long after his own arrival.
He cringed down in the seat as the aircar avoided total catastrophe with a deft maneuver. The driver had the controls on manual.
"You don't use auto?" he asked, getting just a little concerned.
"Not when it's quiet like this," the driver said, soaring to the left to avoid flying into the flux outlets of a public transporter.
David's last trip had covered parsecs running into four figures. Little David had landed on half a hundred outpost worlds, had flown approaches through belts of whizzing asteroids. There wasn't a flying problem in space that David Webster couldn't have handled, but T-Town aircar traffic caused him to close his eyes and sigh in resignation. He opened his eyes again when the jockeying for position eased into smooth flight. He recognized the old home place by the contour of its sun panels, began to pull out credits to pay the driver as the aircar fell like a stone toward the driveway in front of his sister's house. His every impulse was to tell the driver to land at his parents' home. It was sheer fear that stifled that urge.
An urgent is never sent lightly. Personal urgents were usually bad news. If that were true in this case, chances were good that the dire tidings concerned either his mother or his father. The others, Ruth, Sarah, Sheba, and brother Joshua were too young and vital to be ill or—worse.
"Have a nice one, Cap'n," the driver said as David handed him a generous tip. After selling his load of diamonds and emeralds in the Zede System he could afford to be generous. His years in the jewel trading business had made him a very rich man, but that last cargo represented a coup that would have impressed men far richer than he.
Ruth Webster checked him by viewer before she opened the door.
"Welcome home, David," she said. She made no offer to hug or be hugged, but her smile was warm. She was a woman at the peak of her feminine appeal, lithely built, slender, and shapely. Her hair matched David's in color, mouse brown, and their brown eyes were of a kind. It had often been said that the only way you could tell David and Ruth apart was that Ruth was smaller and prettier.
"Hi, Sis," he said. "Sorry I'm late."
"Come in," Ruth said.
Nothing had changed in Ruth Webster's house since the last time David had visited Tigian II. The carpets were thick enough to need mowing. The furniture was traditional, dark woods gleaming, rich fabrics blending their colors with the very good works of art which adorned the walls.
"I got your urgent when I arrived at T-Port," David said.
Ruth sat in a leather chair. She was dressed in a light blue sheath that showed her slender body to good advantage. "Do you care for something?" she asked, as she drew one shapely leg up under her.
"No, thanks."
"You're tired. Sit down."
"No," he said, smiling. She had always tended to think that she knew him better than he knew himself. "I'm not tired. Is your news so bad that I need to sit down?"
"I don't know," she said.
"Perhaps you'd better tell me then, and let me decide."
"Shortly after your last visit home Papa and Mama bought a Mule,"
Ruth said. Ruth was the only one of the five children that called their parents Papa and Mama.
"I'll be damned," he said, relieved. Dan Webster had never been a totally predictable man. Buying a space-going tug was just the sort of thing he might do. David laughed. "Was that why Dad wanted me to give him a quick course in space navigation last time I was here?"
"I don't know whether he had formed his plans completely by that time.
He bought the ship about three months after you left. Sarah and I thought that they'd just use it to take little trips, like over to Xanthos, or to Terra II for camping and wilderness hiking and all those things that Papa talked about doing when he retired. Instead—"
David felt apprehensive again. Ruth was the rock of the family, always capable of handling any crisis without mussing her hair, and he could see that she was worried.
"—he provisioned the Mule for a long trek and started out down the Rimfire's extragalactic routes—"
"Whee," David said.
"We had regular messages from them for a while. Mama would send them. She was very impressed by the distances. Each message was just about the same, something like, 'well, here we are two-thousand-three-hundred parsecs from home.' "
"And then?"
"We had not heard for more than six months when I sent the urgent to you."
"Over a year since you heard from them?"
She nodded.
"You notified X&A?"
"I called the Tigian office. Then Joshua arranged for X&A
Headquarters on Xanthos to send out an all-beacons search bulletin."
"Nothing?"
"Nothing. An X&A patrol vessel crossed paths with them out beyond the periphery. The patrol ship was downrange when Mama sent her last message, so they noted Old Folks' position in their log."
"Do you have those position coordinates?"
"Joshua does."
"Where's old Josh now?"
"He's doing a stint of administrative duty on Xanthos."
"Serves him right," David chuckled.
"X&A says not to worry. It looks as if Old Folks left the established routes right after Mama's last message. Joshua says that he'll have a patrol take a look in-galaxy from that point next time one is passing."