As the Martian-born comtech turned to obey, Dane felt the reaction of his crewmates. His own heart seemed to have been knocked awry by whatever they had hit. He remembered how, just minutes before, he’d envisioned the various ways his crewmates each responded to danger.
He’d come to know them well in his time aboard the Queen, and he knew how much they trusted one another, and the captain. And now they seemed to have reached the end of their shiptime together.
Salvage would break the Queen permanently—there was no way out of that.
He looked down at his hands, which seemed suddenly unfamiliar. They were the hands of a man—a big, rawboned man, callused and strong. He’d been scarcely out of his teens when he’d come to the Queen, straight from Pool and training. He’d finished his growing up with this crew. The Queen was his home. He flexed his hands, thinking: I guess I should consider myself lucky to be alive, even for a short time.
A broad hand clapped his shoulder and squeezed. He looked up into Van Ryke’s good-humored eyes and his reassuring smile. A faint hope awoke. If Van Ryke didn’t seem worried, maybe there was an angle no one else had seen as yet.
Tang Ya sat back and sighed. "It’ll be at least an hour before we hear anything," he said.
The captain nodded curtly. "Then we have an hour to plan." He keyed the com so everyone on board could participate. "We hit something, probably space debris, since there was nothing in the charts. We knew when we voted on this option that this was the closest margin we’d ever run—we had to balance our fuel and hyperspace jump against the needs of landing. I don’t have to calculate the odds against running into something in snapout. We all know they’re in the billions against one, but it seems this time our luck ran out."
Dane flexed his hands again.
"Not to complain, my dear friends..." From the engine deck came the familiar humorous drawl of the engineer apprentice Ali Kamil. "We all voted yes when we left Canuche, but it seems our luck ran out that day."
For a long moment there was silence, and Dane sensed everyone considering the wearing weeks they’d just endured.
Their hearts had been high when they left Canuche. The Queen was in good shape, and they had the generous sum given them by the grateful Macgregory for their heroic work there. They’d chosen not to stay on Canuche, though the cargo work promised by the equally grateful merchants would have meant a steady income. Steady—and boring.
They had decided unanimously to turn down the contract, for they were not cargo haulers, but Free Traders.
This was the risk every Free Trader took. Life was a gamble, and sometimes one lost. At least Captain Jellico permitted his crew to vote on the big decisions, and again everyone had voted unanimously to put all their earnings into the Survey auction on Denlieth, which had sounded so promising for Traders looking for new opportunities. Unfortunately the big Companies had heard the same scuttlebutt. All the Queen had been able to afford to bid on had been a Class D planet, and they’d scarcely gotten that as Combine and Inter-Solar had not only snapped up the better choices, but the I-S agent— probably in revenge for past encounters—had deliberately driven up the prices on the rest.
The Queen had just managed to get the one claim, and it had proved to be a dead one. Worse, the refueling station promised on the tape with the planet’s coordinates had closed down probably weeks before their arrival, for lack of business, and the Queen had been forced to make what fuel they had last for this jump. They’d had no choice but to head for the nearest system, which was farther out on the frontiers of the Terran Federation than they had ever been. The Company ships seldom came out this far; even Free Traders were rare.
Most of the crew had groused about Mykos—all except Jan Van Ryke.
Dane looked up at the cargo master, who was watching the screens, his lips pursed. Van Ryke had admitted that he thought the Kanddoyds, and Exchange, might turn out to be a successful venture.
"Don’t like habitats," Johan Stotz had growled.
"Me either," Ali had drawled, lounging behind his chief, his handsome face derisive. "If human beings were meant to live in gas tubes in space,
we would have been born in vacuum."
"That’s the way most humans feel," Van Ryke had said, beaming at them in triumph. "Which is exactly why we have a greater chance at success. Just think how little Terran competition we’ll find!"
Now Dane looked around, saw Rip Shannon, the astrogator apprentice, tapping his fingers on his knees. "We might be able to work a deal," he said. "We all have good skills—"
"Right," came Craig Tau’s voice over the com. "We might be forced to hire ourselves out to different outfits for a time, but if we pledge to save half our earnings and come back to rescue the Queen—"
"If she’s not rendered down into scrap in the meantime." Karl Kosti’s rumbling voice came from the engine deck.
"Which is why we cut a deal," Kamil said. "We have several silver tongues on board—"
All through their discussion, Dane noted abstractedly that Wilcox had not ceased his scanning of surrounding space; having satisfied himself of a clear course ahead, the astrogator had turned his attention in other directions.
" Captain!" Wilcox’s exclamation brought everyone’s attention forward again. "We’ve got a tail! Matching velocity—"
"Tang!" Jellico snapped. "Raise them."
Dane saw Rael frown and Van Ryke grip a handhold in the hatchway. He suspected they had the same thought as he did: was this some new form of space piracy?
"Working, Captain—" Tang Ya muttered. The comtech crouched over his console, the muscles in his broad back ridged with his intense concentration. "No answer—"
"Try Shver and Kanddoyd frequencies," Jellico cut in.
Of course Terran frequencies might not work this far out—Dane didn’t know much about their present location, except that the Mykos system
was on the boundaries of two alien spheres of influence, Kanddoyd and Shver.
"Sent, Captain," Tang said. "No response." He paused. "And no engine emissions detectable, either."
"Rip, try to get visuals," Jellico ordered.
The astrogator apprentice worked at his console as Jellico went about setting up their defense system. Not that they had much in the way of weaponry—the Solar Queen was a Trade vessel, not a fighter.
For a protracted moment there was silence on the bridge again. Dane watched until the edges of his vision twinkled darkly, then realized he had been holding his breath too long.
Rip said suddenly, "There it is!"
He keyed his console and the screen overhead flickered. They all stared up at the sleek ship following them. A frisson of fear shuddered through Dane as he noted the unfamiliar lines of the ship—it was not of Terran manufacture, nor, he knew from his recent studies, Kanddoyd or Shver.
No lights shone from it. The ship looked dead.
"Plague ship?" Jasper Weeks’s voice came over the ship’s com. The jet tech’s apprentice was obviously watching on Kosti’s screen.
Wilcox looked over at the captain. "May be, and maybe abandoned." He tabbed a key and the ship jumped even closer to view, showing dark scoring down one side. "Looks like she’s been fired on."
"She’s Terran registry," Rip exclaimed as their angle on the gleaming hull changed. In silence they read the registry numbers, and next to it, in Terran script and another script Dane had never seen before, was the word Starvenger.
"If she’s Terran registry, chances are the crew were human, or humanoid," Tau said.
Kosti’s voice came over the com: "Question is, if we use fuel to match speeds and cable it in, we’re going to be running on fumes. Unless it’s got