He looked around, and to his surprise saw three faces watching him.
A woman, short gray hair, big brown eyes narrowed in a mean look, and the strong arms of a cargo wrangler, stared right at Karl, and said, "Patrol might look the other way, but we don’t."
The tall, dark-faced man on her right side said, "If Trade Authority won’t do something about jacking, then it’s up to Traders to keep our name clean."
The man on the left, a squat fellow with red hair and the characteristic powerful upper torso of the Martian colonist, twisted his thin lips in an ugly grin and said, "I’d certainly think twice about fouling the air around honest spacers, if I had bloody hands."
Karl glanced to his own left, and to his right, and he realized that the white noise had completely stopped, that everyone in the place was watching.
The woman said, "Seems like when we’re done, we ought to rename that ship, too, shouldn’t we? How’s Solar Scum? Or better, Killer Queen!"
Karl realized they really were talking about him. A chill of shock twitched along his muscles, followed by anger. Hot, glorious anger.
"You talk about the Solar Queen," he said, "you clean up your mouth."
"Then you better clean your hands, jacker," the man on the right fired back.
"Say that again," Karl warned, "and I’ll have to clean up your mouth for you."
The woman threw her bulb into the recycler and crossed her arms. "Is ’bloody killer’ and ’pirate’ nicer?"
Karl didn’t answer. There were times when you talked, and there were times when talk would be worthless. He flexed his hands and launched across the table, aiming at the nearest wrangler’s throat.
Jellico swung himself up from his desk and hit the door control.
Outside his cabin Sinbad strolled, tail high, licking his chops. Since he wasn’t coming from the direction of the galley, Jellico wondered where the cat had been begging. With delicate grace Sinbad descended to the lab level, and Jellico followed. He glanced around swiftly when he stepped in. The only person in view was Craig Tau.
Jellico looked down into the sterile chamber the two medics had rigged for Alpha and Omega. One of the cats was batting at a little toy; the other was busy licking her fur. Sinbad hopped up to stare at them, sniffed, then turned away and with a flick of his long tail vanished outside the hatchway again.
"How are Alpha and Omega?" Jellico asked Tau.
"Check out," the medic said. "Whatever hit the crew, it escaped these cats. They are completely clean. We could let them out today, if you want."
"Wait," Jellico said.
Tau nodded, obviously comprehending immediately: better to keep them tanked up until the mystery of their home-ship was solved. Tau
looked down at his desk and said, "Want an update on the other matter we’ve discussed?"
"Any changes?"
"Nothing, really."
"It can wait," Jellico said; the last thing he wanted to think about now was long-term effects of strange substances they had encountered on earlier runs. There was too much to think about right now.
The medic turned back to his work, and Jellico backed out the hatchway, stopping when he heard voices coming down the ladder well.
"... getting into my garden and eating all the fruit." That was Frank Mura, and he sounded angry.
Jellico frowned. Whatever had gotten the quiet, controlled Frank upset was something he’d better know about.
"I can assure you that we have not let the cats out," Rael Cofort’s voice came, calm and emotionless.
"If it’s not the cats, it’s someone human," Mura said. "Someone who should know better. All they have to do is ask—no one has accused me yet of short-rationing the Queen's crew, not in all the years I’ve served on her."
"Do you think it’s possible," the woman said slowly, "that someone got hungry when you were off-shift—or on leave?"
"I haven’t left the Queen and I don’t intend to," Mura snapped. "The sooner we blast away from this trash can the happier I’ll be."
"I promise to keep my eyes and ears open," Cofort said.
Jellico started up the ladder then. A moment later he heard the galley door hiss shut. Rael Cofort appeared at the top of the well, saw Jellico, and backed into the mess so he could finish ascending. He followed her in.
"More things disappearing?" he asked.
She gave a nod, and leaned against a bulkhead. "Food, mostly. And he’s also angry because little odd bits of gear have been strewn about here and
there." She absently tucked a loose strand of gold-highlighted hair back into its coronet.
Jellico looked away, wanted something to do with his hands, so he drew a hot bulb of jakek. "Runs a clean ship. Matter of pride," he said.
Cofort gave a nod, then bit her lip.
"What’s on your mind?" Jellico prompted.
She tipped her chin back toward the galley. "Frank. You know he hasn’t been off-ship—"
Jellico said, "Right."
She sighed. "Well, it’s obvious he is disturbed by the Kanddoyds. Not surprising, given their looks and the parallel destruction of homelands. And it would be easy to dismiss his annoyance at the little things going wrong on board as hostility against Exchange."
"But you think that’s a mistake?"
She gave her head a quick shake. "I don’t know what to think. I really like the cylome, and personally, I find the Kanddoyds I’ve met to be congenial, and even the Shver—those who are willing to talk to Terrans—are interesting. But I get a sense that there’s something askew here."
"Like?"
She shrugged. "I can’t really say. Different things—even Mura’s missing food. Then there was the way the com center closed up on Dane and Rip so suddenly yesterday."
"You don’t think they’d overstepped their boundaries?"
"Not those two," she said with obvious conviction. "I have to admit I’ve been waiting around here for them to return from today’s check—maybe it’s just my imagination."
Jellico grinned. "So you’ve been watching your chrono too?"
A swift flush of color rose in her cheeks, and she grinned back.
For a moment his mind emptied of everything but the curve of her lips, and the merry gleam in her eyes. Did she feel it too, this compulsion like the iron for the magnet?
It was a relief when, this time, she was the first to turn away.
Tang Ya looked again at the numbers on the computer screen.
He’d found it the day before, and had been working ever since, as yet without saying anything to his crewmates. Tang Ya liked to have all his facts at hand before going to the captain and facing Jellico’s curt, but always penetrating, questions.
Sleep tugged at his eyelids and the back of his neck seemed to be on fire. He glanced at the array of crushed jakek tubes at the side of his console, and felt a distinct wish for something stronger—like Crax seed.
Though once he handed this data off, his job would not end, and he would not have the luxury of the recovery time a bout with Crax seed required.
Instead, he had to rely on his own adrenaline. So again he typed in the dates.
Computers, of course, had no emotions, nor did the script reflect the operator’s emotions unless the operator manipulated the fonts to that end.
Somehow, though, it seemed strange for the bare text to appear in the same bland alphanumerics, picked for their clarity, as more nominal calculations. Still, there it was, the mute evidence at last that something was badly askew here. Unless the comparative timetables for all the registered planets were wrong—which had not happened yet, in all the years he’d used them—the Starvenger had officially been abandoned eighteen months ago, Terran Standard.