Horn was close behind Larsen and the mate when they reached the scorched area. He saw the passenger port of the Danae open. The Theban's engineer stood fearfully peering out. When Larsen and the red-haired mate made a dash across the hot ground, he shrank back out of sight. Horn followed the other two. His shoesoles were on fire by the time he made a leap into the entrance port, but he did not stop to stamp out the flames. He heard the clatter of the two ahead of him and raced after them.
Cargo holds. Crew's quarters. Messroom and supplies. More cargo holds. But no crew. Passenger quarters, but no passengers. Here Horn stopped, searching feverishly. He saw Ginny's name on a partly opened door. His heart in his throat, he went in. The cabin, perfectly undisturbed, was empty. The bunk was made. Ginny's ship-bags were in place. It was as if she'd stepped out to have dinner or to chat with other passengers and hadn't come back. Her cabin had not been ransacked. The Danae, then, had not become a derelict by mutiny - which was unthinkable - or piracy - which was inconceivable.
Horn heard his own voice, calling Ginny. He stopped himself, went to another cabin, and another, and another. All were without any faintest sign of violence. In his anguish, his throat seemed to close. He flung himself at the companion ladder and climbed furiously. The passengers' lounge, arranged for dining, was empty. Another level up, the Passengers' stores and galley, was empty. Still another level. This held cargo - high-value freight divided among steel cubbyholes, each separately locked. He heard babblings somewhere on this level. Larsen and the mate were busy at the strongboxes. He heard noises suggesting frantic eagerness and raging anticipation.
Horn reached the control room, where the drive plates were still forward for the easier balancing of the ship around its centre of gravity, so in acceleration it would run true to its aimed course.
The control room was empty. Horn hunted frantically for the logbook. All ships on lawful voyages carried logs. These logs were ultimately turned over to the Space Patrol for analysis. Often they showed minor course deviations which were the first indications that a dark star and its brood of satellites was moving into a previously clear ship lane. The Danae's log would tell what had happened before the passengers and crew left in the lifeboats - if they had.
But the log was gone.
Horn made thick, senseless noises. Then he saw paper on the control room floor, under a chair as if it had fallen there. He snatched it up. He read:
"Liner Danae, last port Wolkim, next port Formalhaut." There followed a galactic date, and a time in hours and minutes. "Our engines blew out at -" again a galactic date and time - "and our auxiliary engines do not respond to controls. We calculate our position to be I.37 light years from the beacon on Carola, which is within competed lifeboat range. Therefore we have taken to the boats and will attempt to make Carola. We are: officers two, crewmen four, passengers seven. We are taking the currency from strongbox IV as a salvage operation, having room for it in the boats. We leave the Danae dead in space, transmitting the standard distress call."
It was signed by the skipper of the liner, and was a perfectly spacemanlike document. The Danae, obviously, would continue to transmit though she was a derelict, because from her captain's viewpoint there was a faint hope that her signal might be picked up by some other ship. This memo was in case such a thing happened. The Danae's captain had evidently not imagined that her supposedly blown engines would begin to work again of their own accord after the ship became a derelict. It was probable that the Theban's engineer, half hysterical with terror when he reached the control room, had knocked the statement to the floor without noticing it.
Horn could make guesses, now, about the Danae and everything that had led to her abandonment. Ginny had taken to the boats with the other passengers and crew, trying to make Carola. Carola was uninhabited, but should have stores and food for just such an emergency as the people of the Danae faced. But nearly one and a half light years in a lifeboat was not good. Ginny in a new and well-found liner was to be worried about. Ginny in a cramped spaceboat, with foul air and none of the protective devices of a full-sized ship - that was really frightening. And her situation wasn't an accident. It was part of a crime.
He descended the companionway, hearing Larsen's strangled curses. Horn threaded his way through the strongboxes for high-value freight and found Larsen stamping in frenzied, uncontrollable fury before an opened and empty box. Horn coldly gave consideration to the idea of killing him now, and abandoned it because he himself was no astrogator. He needed to go at once to Carola to find out if Ginny had got there or had died on the way. The coldblooded and sensible way to get there was to have Larsen take him. He held out the memo he'd picked up.
"I found this," he said. He heard his own voice, thin and drained of all emotion because his emotions were numbed by their own intensity. "The engines cut off and they took to the boats. After they'd gone, the engines evidently cut in again. They're heading for Carola in the boats."
Larsen snatched the paper and read it. His face purpled. "They took the money!" he roared. "Forty million interstellar credits ! We've got to get 'em!"
Everything clicked into place in Horn's mind. For a moment or two Larsen was within a fraction of being killed, but then Horn icily told himself that he had to postpone the satisfaction. First things had to come first. Ginny was a first thing.
CHAPTER FIVE
EVERYTHING added up. When the Theban was again in space, this time headed for Carola, everything was perfectly clear to Horn. In ancient days, when in the course of human events a balance of trade was in favour of a nation which did not want to spend the balance in or lend the balance to a debtor nation, the debtor nation paid that balance in metallic gold. There was a tradition that gold was desirable in itself, and for centuries after the falsity of this idea was recognized, gold was nevertheless a medium of exchange.
After Buhl's law of the distribution of elements in planetary systems showed that first orbit worlds were always rich in heavy elements, there was a necessary adjustment of viewpoint. Gold was worth what it cost to get it from the inmost planets of most solar systems, and no more. So the interstellar credit note was invented and became the medium of exchange over all the occupied parts of the galaxy. Its value could be held stable because the quantity of credit notes could be controlled. This credit system was a highly complex, highly abstract, and thoroughly satisfactory way of balancing accounts and trade balances between worlds. And the notes were portable.
They were also avidly desired. It happened that the Danae was carrying forty million interstellar credits for the adjustment of debts and credits between two worlds some light centuries apart. This was not an extraordinary kind of cargo, but it was not publicized, usually, because it tempted thieves. If Larsen had somehow found out about the shipment, then everything that had happened was understandable.
Piracy in space was impossible, in any ordinary sense of the word. True, the Theban's engineer had been put aboard the Danae and that luxurious ship had been landed to be looted at leisure. But the Danae was a derelict when it happened. If there'd been anybody aboard they could have made the boarding impossible simply by putting the ship into overdrive for the briefest of instants. Then the Danae would have vanished, to reappear millions of miles away. Or the mere locking of all air locks and boat blisters would have left the engineer hopelessly marooned on the ship's outer skin, clinging there uselessly until the air in his space suit gave out.