7
The courier ship had room for ten passengers. Dar and Sam were the only ones. After five days, they’d both tried all ten seats at least twice.
“No, really, I do think it looks better from back here,” Dar said from the seat just in front of the aft bulkhead. “You get more of a feeling of depth—and it’s definitely more aesthetic to feel the force of acceleration on your back.”
“What force of acceleration? This ship could be in free-fall, for all we feel. Built-in acceleration compensators, remember? This cabin’s got its own gravity unit.”
“Luxury craft,” Dar griped, “absolutely destroys all sense of motion.”
“Which makes it far more aesthetic to sit in the middle of the cabin,” Sam opined. “You get the sense of the environment this way.” She spread her arms. “The feeling of space—limited, but space. You’re immersed in it.”
“Yeah, but who wants to be immersed in molded-plastic seats and creon upholstery?”
“If your accommodations bother you, sir …”
Dar looked up at the stewardess in annoyance. “I know: I don’t have any choice about it.”
“Not at all, sir. I can offer you a variety of other realms of reality.” The stewardess’s chest slid open, revealing several shelves crammed with pill bottles. “All guaranteed to make you forget where you are, sir, and make the time fly.”
“And my brain with it. No, thank you—I’ll stick with the old-fashioned narcotics.”
A plastic tumbler rammed into his palm; the stewardess’s finger turned into a spigot, and splashed amber-colored fluid and crushed ice into his tumbler. “One old-fashioned, sir.”
“I had in mind a martini,” Dar grumbled. “But thanks, anyway.”
“It is unnecessary to thank me, sir I am merely …”
“A machine, yes. But it keeps me from getting into bad habits. When do we get to Haldane IV?”
“That’s got to be the twelfth time you’ve asked that question,” Sam sighed, “and I told you as soon as we’d boarded—Bhelabher said it’d take us five days!”
“I know, I know,” Dar griped, “but I like to hear her say it. When do we get to Haldane IV, stewardess?”
“Experienced space travelers never ask ‘when,’ sir,” the stewardess answered, a bit primly.
“I love the programmed response.” Dar leaned back, grinning.
“Look at it this way—it’s a faster trip then I had on the way out,” Sam offered. “That took a week and a half.”
“I believe the ship transporting you on the outbound swing was a common freighter, sir…”
“Miz!”
“Oh, really? But I believe you’ll find that an I.D.E. courier ship is a bit faster than your earlier conveyance. In fact, we’re approaching breakout now. Stretch webbing, please.” And the stewardess rolled into her closet, clicking the door shut behind her.
“Talk about bad habits!” Sam snorted. “Or didn’t you realize you were making fun of her?”
“I know, I know,” Dar growled. “But I have definitely taken a dislike to that machine.”
“Programmed by a snob,” Sam agreed. “Come on, we’d better get ready.”
“Approaching breakout,” the resonant PA ship’s voice informed them.
“I don’t know why we bother.” Dar stretched his shock webbing across his body. “What could happen when you break out of H-space, anyway?”
“Y’know, you’re getting to be a pretty surly bird.”
“So, I’ll get a worm. You’ve got to admit, there isn’t even a jar when you break out into normal space.”
“Not unless they’ve got you bottled up.”
Dar frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Sam sighed. “It’s a holdover from the pre-I.D.E. days, when there wasn’t any central government and things were pretty chaotic outside the Sol system. Pirates used to lie in wait for ships at the breakout points. They couldn’t touch a freighter while it was in H-space, but they could jump it as soon as it broke out.”
“Oh.” Dar felt a slight chill of apprehension. “Uh—the central government isn’t too effective, these days…”
“Breaking out,” the ship’s voice informed them. “We will be without interior power for a few seconds.”
The lights went out as all the ship’s power was channeled into the isomorpher, translating them back into normal space. A surge of dizziness washed over Dar, and objective reality became a little subjective for a second or two—in fact, it seemed to go away altogether. Then it came back, and the lights came on again. Dar blinked and turned his head from side to side, to see if it still worked. “On second thought, maybe the webbing isn’t such a bad idea.”
“Please maintain your position,” the ship’s voice advised. “There is an unidentified craft in pursuit.”
Dar looked over at Sam. “What were you saying about pirates?”
“Not in this day and age, certainly.” But she looked a little pale.
“I think they said something like that in the early 1800s, to a man named Jean Laffite.” Dar turned to stare out the porthole. “You know, you can actually see something out there now.”
“Of course—stars. We’re back in normal space, remember? So what did he answer?”
“That one’s got a discernible disk; must be Haldane… Who?”
“This Jean Laffite.”
“Oh—‘Stand and deliver.’ ” Dar peered through the porthole. “There was more; I forget the exact wording, but it had something to do with the ownership of a place called ‘the Caribbean…’ Wow!”
An orange glare lit up the cabin.
“That was close!” Sam said through the afterimages.
“I think that’s what they used to call a ‘shot across the bow.’ ”
“This is serious!” Sam yelped. “Where’s the Navy when you need it?”
“Ask the pirates—I’m sure they know.”
“So do I; I got one of the Navy data operators drunk one night, just before I quit, and got the access code out of him.”
Dar frowned. “Why’d you do that?”
“I wanted to make sure I was going to be safe on my trip out here. And I found out I would be; there wasn’t supposed to be a sailor for fifty parsecs. The nearest fleet’s a hundred seventy-five light-years away, over toward Aldebaran, sitting on their thumbs and polishing the brightwork.”
“What’re they doing there?”
“Somebody called ‘em, about a year ago, to come take care of some pirates.”
“So, while they were on their way out, the pirates were coming back here! Great!” Dar said.
Sam took a deep breath. “Now, wait a minute. Wait a minute. We’re getting carried away here. For all we know, those aren’t pirates out there.”
“Sure, maybe it is the Navy—and for all they know, we’re pirates. If you’ll pardon my saying so …”
A brilliant flare lit up the cabin. Sam shrieked. “I’m convinced! It’s pirates!”
Dar shrugged. “Pirates or Navy—after we’ve been turned into an expanding cloud of hydrogen atoms, I’m afraid I won’t really care much about distinctions.”
“You’re right.” Sam loosed her shock webbing. “Whoever it is, we’ve gotta get out of here.”
Dar’s head snapped up, startled. Then he waved an airy hand toward the porthole. “Sure—be my guest. It’s a great day outside, if you face sunwards. Of course, the night on your backside gets a teeny bit chilly.”
“Credit me with some sense,” she snorted. “This ship must have some kind of lifeboat!”
But Dar was looking out the porthole. “Get down!”
Startled, Sam obeyed. A rending crash shot through the ship, and she slammed back against the cabin wall. Dar bounced out against his webbing.
“What in Ceres’ name was that?” Sam gasped.