"If it meets your standards, Burgy, then it must measure up. Shelby out."
McHenry was already on his way, and Calhoun was half-standing. "If there's nothing else . . ."
But Si Cwan was shaking his head, as if discouraged about something. The gesture caught Calhoun's attention, and he said, "Si Cwan?"
"The Lemax system. I know the area. He must have tried to run the Gauntlet. It shouldn't have been a problem." He sighed.
"The Gauntlet?"
"It's a shooting gallery. Two planets that used to be at war, until we imposed peace upon them. The Gauntlet was a hazard of the past, except apparently the danger has been renewed. Just another example of the breakdown occurring all around us." He shook his head again, and then looked around at the silent faces watching him. And then, without another word, he rose and walked out of the room.
Si Cwan stared at the wall of his quarters. Then he heard the sound of the chime. He ignored it, but it sounded again. "Come," he said with a sigh.
Calhoun entered and just stood there, arms folded. "You left rather abruptly,"
"I felt the meeting was over."
"Generally it's good form for the captain to make that judgment."
"I am somewhat out of practice in terms of having others make judgments on my behalf."
Calhoun walked across the room, pacing out the interior much as Si Cwan had earlier. "How do you wish to be viewed aboard this ship, Cwan? As an object of pity?"
"Of course not," Si Cwan said sharply.
"Contempt, then? Confusion, perhaps?" He stopped and turned to face him. "Your title, accorded out of courtesy more than anything else, is 'Ambassador.' Not prince. Not lord. 'Ambassador.' I will hope you find that satisfactory. And by the same token, I hope you understand and acknowledge my authority on this ship. I do not want my decision to allow you to remain with us to be viewed by you as lack of strength on my part."
"No. I don't view it that way at all."
"I'm pleased to hear that."
Si Cwan regarded him thoughtfully for a moment. "May I ask how you got that scar?"
Calhoun touched it reflexively. "This one?"
"It is the most prominent, yes."
"To be blunt . . . I got it while killing someone like you."
"I see. And should I consider that a warning?"
"I don't have to kill anymore . . . I hope," he added as an afterthought.
They sat in silence for a moment, and then Si Cwan said, "It is important to me that you understand my situation, Captain. We oversaw an empire, yes. In many ways, in your terms, we might have been considered tyrannical. But it was my life, Captain. It was my life, and the life of those around me who worked to maintain it and help it prosper. Whether you agree with our methods or not, there was peace. There was peace,"and he slapped his legs and rose. He turned his back to Calhoun and leaned against the wall, palms spread wide. "Peace built by my ancestors, maintained by my generation. We had a birthright given to us, an obligation . . . and we failed. And now I'm seeing the work of my ancestors, and of my family, dismantled. In a hundred years . . . in ten years, for all I know . . . it will be as if everything we accomplished, for good or ill, will be washed away. Gone. As traceable as a tower of sand on the edge of a beach, consumed by the rising tide. What we did will have made no difference. It was all for nothing. Every difficult decision, every hard choice, ultimately amounted to nothing whatsoever. We have no legacy for our future generations. Indeed, we'll probably have no future generations. I have no royal consort with whom I can perpetuate our line. No royal lineage to pass on."
"And you're hoping to use this vessel to rebuild your power base. Aren't you."
Si Cwan turned and stared at him. "Is that what you think?"
"It's crossed my mind."
"I admit it crossed mine as well. But I give you my word, Captain, that I will do nothing to endanger this ship's mission, nor any of its personnel. My ultimate goal is the same as yours: to serve as needed."
Slowly Calhoun nodded, apparently satisfied. "All right. I can accept that . . . for now."
"Captain . . . ?"
"Yes."
Si Cwan smiled thinly. "You were aware the entire time, weren't you. Aware that I had stowed away on your vessel."
For a moment Calhoun considered lying, a course that he would not hesitate to indulge in if he felt that it would serve his purposes. But his instinct told him that candor was the way to go in this matter. "Yes."
"Good."
"Good?"
"Yes. It is something of a relief, really. The notion that I was aboard a ship where the commanding officer had so little awareness of what was happening around him . . . it was unsettling to me."
"I'm relieved that I was able to put your mind at ease. And Si Cwan . . ."
"Yes?"
"Believe it or not . . . I can sympathize. I've had my own moments where I felt that my life had been wasted."
"And may I ask how you dealt with such times of despair?"
And Mackenzie Calhoun laughed softly and said, "I took command of a starship." But then he held up a warning finger. "Don't get any ideas from that."
"I shall try not to, Captain. I shall try very hard."
X.
HUFMIN STARED OUTat the stars and, focusing on one at a time, uttered a profanity for every one he picked out.
Cramped in the helm pit of the Cambon,he still couldn't believe that he had gotten himself into this fix. He scratched at his grizzled chin and dwelt for the umpteenth time on the old Earth saying that no good deed goes unpunished.
He glanced at his instrumentation once more, his lungs feeling heavier and heavier. He knew that the last thing you were supposed to do upon receiving a head injury was let yourself fall asleep. And so he had kept himself awake through walking around in the cramped quarters, through stimulants, recitation, biting himself—anything and everything he could think of. None of which was going to do him a damned bit of good because, just to make things absolutely perfect, he wasn't going to be able to breathe for all that much longer. The life-support systems were tied into his engines. When they went down, the support systems switched to backup power supply, but that was in the process of running out. Hufmin was positive it was getting tougher to breathe, although he wasn't altogether certain how much of that was genuine and how much was just his imagination running away with him. But if it wasn't happening now, it was going to be happening soon enough as the systems became incapable of cleansing the atmosphere within the craft and everybody within suffocated.
Everybody . . .
Every . . . body . . .
. . . lots of bodies.
Not for the first time, he dwelt on the fact that this was a case where the more was most definitely not the merrier. Every single body on the ship was another person who was taking up space, another person breathing oxygen and taking up air that would be better served to keep him, Hufmin, alive.
What had possessed him? What in God's name had possessed him to take on this useless, unprofitable detail? If he'd been a Ferengi he would have been drummed out of . . . well, whatever it was that Ferengi were drummed out of when they made unbelievably bad business decisions. The problem was that this was no longer simply a case of costing him money. Now it was going to cost him his life.